Noted civil rights activist speaks at Schenectady church

PHOTOGRAPHER: Erica Miller

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Capital Region Chapter, welcomed civil rights activist and organizer Dr. Bernard LaFayette at the Friendship Baptist Church in Schenectady on Saturday morning, Feb. 20, 2016.

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When Bernard Lafayette was in his early-20s, he needed parental permission for a trip he wanted to make. Lafayette, a longtime civil rights activist and practitioner of nonviolence, wanted to ride a bus into the heart of the segregated South.

“‘I’m not going to sign your death warrant,’” he recalled his dad saying of the permission slip.

Those bus rides, which he later joined, were known as the Freedom Rides, and they helped spark national attention to the violent racism that permeated all facets of southern life in the 1960s. The Freedom Rides are just one in a long list of historic civil rights milestones that Lafayette played a role in.

He helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee and led voter registration drives throughout the South. He “sat-in” at segregated lunch counters and helped negotiate a resolution to a standoff between federal and tribal officials at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. He was jailed nearly 30 times as he broke the laws that he found unjust.

On Saturday, he shared those stories and explained why his abiding faith in the practice of nonviolent resistance has never waned after more than 50 years of activism and education with a small crowd of residents at the Friendship Baptist Church in Schenectady.

Lafayette articulated the importance of nonviolence as a force for change and recounted stories about his years on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement. He also explained how interconnected the world is and how an individual’s actions can reverberate around the globe.

“As we look at the world today, we don’t have the privilege of looking at just our community,” Lafayette said. “Because no matter what we do the rest of the larger community and global community directly affects us.”

Lafayette was with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the days leading up to his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., he told the crowd. Before his death, King had told Lafayette that the activists needed to “institutionalize and internationalize” the nonviolent movement.

That has been the work that Lafayette has devoted his life to ever since, he said.

“Those were my marching orders and that’s what I have been working on,” he said.”I haven’t had time to grieve (King’s death) up to this point; I haven’t shed a tear.”

Lafayette also touched on the recent wave of emerging young black activists. He helps advise leaders from groups like Black Lives Matter, listening to their questions and feeding them more questions. He said the leaders of those groups of young activists are starting to embrace nonviolence and show more of an interest in learning its methods. But he also said there is a tricky balance to walk between sharing lessons of the past with young activists and not dictating strategies to them.

He urged the crowd to organize on behalf of the causes important to the Schenectady and Capital Region communities, suggesting a birthday party complete with voter registration cards for everyone who just turned 18. (“Wouldn’t that be a party with a purpose?”)

He also said he would be willing to come back to help lead a two-day seminar on the practice and tactics of nonviolence resistance – an offer some of the leaders in attendance were happy to jump at.

“People say you get hit and you don’t hit back,” Lafayette said of the nonviolence practiced by King and a long line of civil rights activists that have followed. “Oh, yes you do. You hit back with such a force you change your opponent; you hit back so hard your opponent becomes your ally and that is your goal.”

Reach Gazette reporter Zachary Matson at 395-3120, [email protected] or @zacharydmatson on Twitter.