James Bevel

James Luther Bevel (October 19, 1936 – December 19, 2008) was an American minister and a leader and major strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and then as its director of direct action and nonviolent education, he initiated, strategized, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma voting rights movement, and the 1966 Chicago open housing movement. Bevel suggested that SCLC call for and join a March on Washington in 1963 and strategized the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches which contributed to Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Prior to his time with SCLC, Bevel worked in the Nashville Student Movement, which conducted the 1960 Nashville Lunch-Counter Sit-Ins, the 1961 Open Theater Movement, and recruited students to continue the 1961 Freedom Rides after they were attacked. He helped with initiating and directing the 1961 and 1962 voting rights movement in Mississippi. In 1967, Bevel was chairman of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. He initiated the 1967 March on the United Nations as part of the anti-war movement. Bevel's last major action was as co-initiator of the 1995 Day of Atonement/Million Man March in Washington, D.C. For his work, Bevel has been called the strategist and architect of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and, with Dr. King, half of the first-tier team that formulated many of the strategies and actions to gain federal legislation and social changes during the 1960s civil rights era. After serving seven months, he was freed awaiting an appeal; Bevel died of pancreatic cancer in December 2008 and was buried in Eutaw, Alabama.

Early life and education (1936–1961) Bevel was born in 1936 in Itta Bena, Mississippi, the son of Illie and Dennis Bevel. He was one of 17 children and grew up in rural LeFlore County of the Mississippi Delta and in Cleveland, Ohio. Bevel worked on a cotton plantation for a time as a youth and later in a steel mill. He was educated at segregated local schools in both Mississippi and Cleveland. After high school, Bevel served in the U.S. Navy for a time and pursued a career as a singer.

The Open Theater Movement, led by Bevel, had success in Nashville, the only city in the country where SCLC activists had organized such an action. In this same period, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had organized the 1961 Freedom Rides through the Deep South to challenge southern state laws and practices that interstate buses and their facilities remain segregated despite federal laws for equal treatment. After buses and riders were severely attacked, including a firebombing of a bus and beatings with police complicity in Birmingham, Alabama, CORE suspended the rides. Diane Nash, the Nashville Student Movement's chairman, urged the group to continue the Freedom Rides, and called for college volunteers from Fisk and other universities across the South. Bevel selected the student teams for the buses. He and the others were arrested after they arrived in Jackson, Mississippi and tried to desegregate the waiting rooms in the bus terminal. Eventually, the Freedom Riders reached their goal of New Orleans, Louisiana, generating nationwide coverage of the violence to maintain Jim Crow and white supremacy in the South.

While in the Jackson jail, Bevel and Bernard Lafayette initiated the Mississippi Voting Rights Movement. They, Nash, and others stayed in Mississippi to work on grassroots organizing. Activists encountered severe violence at that time and retreated to regroup. Later efforts in Mississippi developed as Freedom Summer in 1964, when extensive voter education and registration efforts took place. Lafayette and his wife, Colia Lidell, also opened an SNCC project in Selma, Alabama, to assist the work of local organizers such as Amelia Boynton.

Bevel and King join forces (1962) In 1962, Bevel was invited to meet in Atlanta with Martin Luther King Jr, a minister who was head of the SCLC. At that meeting, which had been suggested by James Lawson, Bevel and King agreed to work together on an equal basis, with neither having veto power over the other, on projects under the auspices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). They agreed to work until they had ended segregation, obtained voting rights, and ensured that all American children had a quality education. They agreed to continue until they had achieved these goals, and to ask for funding from the SCLC only if the group was involved in organizing a movement. King was initially reluctant, but agreed. Bevel spent weeks developing strategy, recruiting and educating students in the philosophy and techniques of nonviolence. Their meetings occurred at Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, and it was from there that Bevel directed the students, 50 at a time, to peacefully walk to Birmingham's City Hall to talk to Mayor Art Hanes about segregation in the city. Almost 1,000 students were arrested on the first day. The following day, when more students arrived at the church and started to walk to city hall, Eugene "Bull" Connor, City Commissioner of Public Safety, ordered that German Shepherd dogs and high-pressure fire hoses be used to stop them. The national and international media covered the story, and photographs of the force used against schoolchildren generated public outrage against the city and its officials.

Dispute with President John F. Kennedy and the March on Washington

During what was later called the Birmingham Children's Crusade, President John F. Kennedy asked King to stop using children in the campaign. King asked Bevel to refrain from recruiting students, and Bevel instead said that he would organize the children to march to Washington D.C. to meet with Kennedy about segregation, and King agreed. They moved to Alabama to implement the project along with Birmingham student activist James Orange.

At the turn of the 20th century, southern state legislatures had passed new constitutions and laws that effectively disenfranchised most blacks. Practices such as requiring payment of poll taxes and literacy tests administered in a discriminatory way by white officials maintained the exclusion of blacks from the political system in the 1960s. SNCC had been conducting a Voting Rights Project (headed by Prathia Hall and Worth Long) since the early 1960s, meeting with violence in Alabama. In late 1963 Bevel, Nash, and Orange also worked with local grassroots organizations to educate blacks and support them in trying to gain registration as voters, but made little progress. They invited King and other SCLC leaders to Selma to develop larger protests and actions, and work alongside Bevel's and Nash's Alabama Project. He worked to create tenant unions and build grassroots action to "end" slums. From previous discussions with King, and from work of American Friends Service Committee activist Bill Moyer, Bevel organized, and directed the Chicago open housing movement. Housing in the area was segregated in a de facto way, enforced by covenants and real estate practices. This movement ended within a Summit Conference that included Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.

As the Chicago movement neared its conclusion A. J. Muste, David Dellinger, representatives of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, and others asked Bevel to take over the directorship of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Bevel was influential in gaining King's support for the anti-war movement,

Memphis sanitation strike (1968) Although he opposed King's and SCLC's participation in it, Bevel, along with King and Ralph Abernathy, helped lead the Memphis sanitation workers' strike by organizing the protest and work stoppage. The strike began on February 12, 1968, after two black sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning garbage compactor truck on February 1, and the city's discriminatory response to the deaths catalyzed over 1,300 sanitation workers to walk off their jobs. Their organizing efforts included coordinating with local leadership, planning demonstration logistics, and building community support for the March 22 citywide action.

The originally planned March 22 demonstration was postponed due to a massive snowstorm that prevented King's return to Memphis, forcing organizers to reschedule the march for March 28. On March 28, the demonstration turned violent when some participants engaged in window-breaking and looting, resulting in the death of 16-year-old Larry Payne and injuries to approximately 60 people.

Due to the violence that ensued during the strike, the city of Memphis filed a formal District Court complaint against King, Hosea Williams, James Bevel, James Orange, Ralph Abernathy, and Bernard Lee, all members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) staff.

Bevel was in the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and witnessed King's assassination on April 4, 1968. He reminded SCLC's executive board and staff that evening that King had left "marching orders" that, if anything should happen to him, he intended for Abernathy to take his place as SCLC's chairman. Bevel continued to oppose the Poor People's Campaign, but served as its director of nonviolent education.

For Bevel, King's assassination "represented a great personal crisis." In particular, he claimed that James Earl Ray had not killed King and he offered to defend Ray in court; also campaigning for Ray's release from prison, even though Ray pled guilty to the crime.

In the 1980s, Bevel supported Ronald Reagan as president.

In 1989, Bevel and Abernathy organized the National Committee Against Religious Bigotry and Racism. This was financially backed by the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, which appeared to be trying to improve its controversial image by allying with such respected leaders. A year earlier, Bevel had denounced the deprogramming of a Moon follower and called for the protection of religious freedom. He also supported Unification Church members in their protest against news media use of the word "Moonie", which they considered offensive.

Bevel moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in November 1990 as the leader of the "Citizens Fact-Finding Commission to Investigate Human Rights Violations of Children in Nebraska", a group organized by the Schiller Institute. The commission was associated with conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, and sought to persuade the state legislature to reopen its two-year investigation into the Franklin child prostitution ring allegations. Bevel never submitted the collected petitions and left the state the following summer.

In 1992, Bevel ran on LaRouche's ticket as the vice presidential candidate. At the time, he was living and working in Leesburg, Virginia, near LaRouche's headquarters. LaRouche, characterized as a perennial candidate, was serving a prison sentence for mail fraud and tax evasion. He engaged in LaRouche seminars on issues including "Is the Anti Defamation League the new KKK?" When Bevel introduced LaRouche at a convention of the 1996 National African American Leadership Summit, both men were booed off the stage. A fight broke out between LaRouche supporters and black nationalists.

Criminal charges (2007–2008) In May 2007, Bevel was arrested in Alabama on a charge of incest committed sometime between October 1992 and October 1994 in Loudoun County, Virginia. At the time, Bevel was living in Leesburg, Virginia, and working with LaRouche's group, whose international headquarters was a few blocks from Bevel's apartment.

The accuser was one of his daughters, who was 13–15 years old at the time and lived with him. At a family reunion, three other daughters had also alleged that Bevel sexually abused them.

During the trial, prosecutors presented key evidence: a 2005 police-sting telephone call recorded by the Leesburg police without Bevel's knowledge. During that 90-minute call, Bevel's daughter asked him why he had sex with her the one time in 1993, and she asked him why he wanted her to use a vaginal douche afterward. Bevel said that he had no interest in getting her pregnant. At trial, Bevel denied committing the sexual act and his recorded statement was used against him.

On April 10, 2008, after a three-hour deliberation, the jury convicted Bevel of incest. His bond was revoked and he was taken into custody. On October 15, 2008, the judge sentenced him, based on the jury's recommendation, to 15 years in prison and fined him $50,000. After the verdict, Bevel claimed that the charges were part of a conspiracy to destroy his reputation, and said that he might appeal. He received an appeal bond on November 4, 2008, and was released from jail three days later, after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Bevel's attorney requested that the Court of Appeals of Virginia abate the conviction on account of Bevel's death. The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the trial court to determine whether there was good cause not to abate the conviction. The trial court found that abating the conviction would deny the victim the closure that she sought and denied the motion to abate. The Court of Appeals affirmed this judgment. Bevel's attorney appealed the denial of the abatement motion to the Supreme Court of Virginia. In an opinion issued November 4, 2011, the commonwealth's Supreme Court held that abatement of criminal convictions was not available in Virginia under the circumstances of Bevel's case. Because the executor of Bevel's estate had not sought to prosecute the appeal, the Court affirmed the dismissal of his appeal as moot.

Marriage and family In 1961, Bevel married activist Diane Nash after he completed his seminary studies. They worked together on civil rights, and had a daughter and son together. They divorced after seven years. He married two other women in the following decades, and had told the court during his incest case that he had 16 children born of seven women.