The Rev. Dr. Bernard Lafayette Jr., a titan of the Civil Rights Movement and close confidant of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., passed away on the morning of Thursday, March 5 at the age of 85 in Tuskegee, Alabama.
His wife Dr. Kate B. Lafayette, whose father worked as a secretary for the 20th century African American business icon Booker T. Washington, shared news of the death with the nationally acclaimed journalist and cultural critic Bankole Thompson, the founder and dean of The PuLSE Institute, the Detroit-based national and independent anti-poverty think tank. Thompson was a very close friend and a mentee of LaFayette, who was the first major historical figure to answer the call of The PuLSE Institute to serve on the National Advisory Board when it was founded several years ago.
Lafayette was a very close ally and dear friend of the late Dr. Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. In fact, he invited Dr. Gandhi to join him as well on The PuLSE Institute National Advisory Board.
Lafayette and Bankole Thompson developed a close relationship for over two decades and often he would discuss the power and importance of communication in pushing the goals of civil and human rights. He would remind the latter that he (LaFayette) always wanted to be a journalist because he wrote for and was very involved in his high school student newspaper but for the intervention of his grandmother who obstructed his newspaper plans. Instead, she insisted that a young LaFayette would become a minister of the gospel which took him into the Civil Rights Movement.
In 2023, Lafayette as Chairman of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which was founded by King, and who once described Thompson as a “remarkable person with many talents and powerful passion,” nominated the journalist to join the organization’s National Board of Directors.
Thompson, who is a standard-bearer for economic justice issues, and whom the late civil rights hero and global statesman the Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr., personally presented him with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s 2018 Let Freedom Ring Journalism Award in January of 2018, accepted LaFayette’s invitation to join SCLC National Board. He became the first journalist in American history to be added to the highest-decision making body of the organization that King infused his personal legacy into.
“Dr. Lafayette was like a father figure to me. He treated me like I was one of his biological sons. I would check on him almost every month to see how he was doing and he would share his doctor visits with me. This loss is very personal. Few men and women throughout the great pipelines of history have demonstrated with moral clarity and urgency the essence of being a true difference-maker than Dr. Lafayette,” Thompson said. “He was a beautiful and a transcending soul who in my view represents one of the best gifts ever given to our civilization. His decision to work for and with King and to champion the cause of the Civil Rights Movement, signals a profound and longstanding commitment to overcome evil with good. In so doing, Dr. LaFayette represented a triumph of the human spirit and a powerful demonstration of our shared humanity.”
Thompson, one of the nation’s first Black editors to conduct a series of exclusive sit-down interviews with President Barack Obama, a member of the National Press Club of Washington D.C., and a twice-a-week opinion columnist at The Detroit News, hailed LaFayette as a man who made global impact.
“There will never be another Rev. Dr. Bernard Lafayette Jr. Like the British theologian John Wesley once posited by declaring that the world was his parish, the world too was the parish of LaFayette, a noble son of the American South. He ministered to people all over the world about King’s nonviolence philosophy. He was truly the consummate apostle of the movement to uplift Black humanity and in so doing, he uplifted all of humanity. We owe it to his generation – the Moses Generation- to pick up the moral mantle of leadership to advance the cause of King’s fierce urgency of now in these times.”
Lafayette, one of the last remaining lions of a movement that defeated Jim Crow and a trusted lieutenant of King, who spent hours with the civil rights leader in his hotel room in Memphis before his April 4, 1968 assassination, was the poverty czar of the Civil Rights Movement. In that capacity he served as the National Coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, the watershed moment of the battle to bring economic injustice to the attention of the federal government.
At the same time, King also named him the National Program Administrator of SCLC, which played a major role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He was one of the original Freedom Riders, a co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and he was a roommate of the late Georgia Congressman and civil rights champion John Lewis at the American Baptist Theological Seminary.
Without him, Selma, would not have been the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement because it was Lafayette King chose to initiate the historic voting rights campaign in that city which he documented in his didactic book titled, “In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma.”
Perhaps it is nothing short of a major historical coincidence that Lafayette, died the week of Bloody Sunday, the annual commemoration of the March 7, 1965 Bloody Sunday law enforcement attack on civil rights activists on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. It is the very place where Lafayette would courageously launch a remarkable campaign that saw the Voting Rights Act of 1965 become law. This weekend activists and voting rights advocates will return to Selma for the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday. But without LaFayette.
Having been arrested numerous times, LaFayette, also survived an assassination attempt on the night that NAACP civil rights leader Medgar Evers was killed in 1963. As an important member of King’s inner circle, Lafayette, always discussed his efforts to bring more critical staff to the functioning of the SCLC at the height of the Civil Rights Movement by recruiting leaders like Rev. Jackson to work for King’s organization.
“Dr. Bernard Lafayette was a towering leader in the historic Civil Rights Movement, a champion of economic justice, and a worldwide olive branch for nonviolence. His substantial efforts led to critical achievements that unlocked tremendous political and economic power for African Americans and other historically oppressed communities through landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” said Attorney Tina M. Patterson, the president and director of research at The PuLSE Institute. “He was a pillar of inspiration, demonstrating the power of persistence, determination, and courage, not solely for individual self, but for the benefit of the greater good. Even in his final years, he remained a beacon of strength with unwavering commitment to the cause, still traveling the world and his local community, teaching the application of nonviolent principles, as well as continuing to keep alive the legacy of Dr. King through his chairmanship at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.”
Patterson, a nationally recognized legal authority whose work has been cited in major law journals including the Georgetown Law Journal on Poverty Law and Policy and the North Carolina Banking Institute at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, underscored Lafayette’s role in helping advance the mission of The Institute.
“Dr. Lafayette was also a most generous and kind soul, always ready to share his leadership wisdom and readily accepting our invitation as one of the first members of our National Advisory Panel,” said Patterson, who is a former federal government Attorney Advisor for the United States Social Security Administration who advised and wrote the appellate opinions of administrative law judges across the United States and Puerto Rico.
The Rev. Dr. C. Paschal Eze, the Chairman of the Board of The PuLSE Institute praised Lafayette’s commitment to humanity.
“We have just lost one of the truest believers in humanity. His resourcefulness inspired us. His humility challenged us. His kindness enlightened us. His resilience emboldened us,” Eze said.
Perhaps one of Lafayette’s most lasting and pivotal public historical engagements came in 2025, when The PuLSE Institute celebrated his decades of civil rights leadership in Detroit on July 22 during its Civil Rights Leadership Dinner held at the Detroit Athletic Club in downtown Detroit. At the Dinner, which was attended by a cross section of civic, business and political leaders across metro Detroit, and chaired by Jerry Norcia, the Executive Chairman of DTE Energy, the Detroit-headquartered Fortune 500 energy company, The Institute presented LaFayette with its Global Civil Rights Leadership Award. He also received a surprise cake to honor his 85th birthday on July 29. Attendees sang the Stevie Wonder Happy Birthday tribute that was recorded to honor King’s legacy. Moved by the gesture, Lafayette, recounted at the celebration how he was at King’s last birthday bash.
“It was our most extreme honor to host Dr. Lafayette and commend his venerable achievements during our inaugural Civil Rights Leadership dinner last summer, and our humble privilege to also celebrate his birthday, which none of us knew would be his last,” said Patterson, The president of The Institute. “On behalf of The PuLSE Institute, we extend our deepest condolences to Dr. Lafayette’s family, especially his lovely wife, Dr. Kate Lafayette. As we continue in our mission against poverty, we will lift the name of Dr. Bernard Lafayette with the deepest appreciation and respect for the immense groundwork he laid in moving toward the essential and inherent human values of equal opportunity and justice for all. Thank you, Dr. Bernard Lafayette.”
