{"id":160573,"date":"2026-03-18T00:56:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T00:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=160573"},"modified":"2026-03-18T00:56:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T00:56:30","slug":"bernard-lafayette-selma-voting-rights-organizer-dies-at-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=160573","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Bernard LaFayette, Selma Voting Rights Organizer, Dies At 85&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffpost.com\/entry\/bernard-lafayette-selma-voting-rights-organizer-dies-at-85_n_69aa14f0e4b0d84f0de1a2ac\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">HuffPo<\/a>: &#8220;Bernard LaFayette, the advance man who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bernard LaFayette, III, said his father died Thursday morning of a heart attack. He was 85.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On March 7, 1965, the beating of future congressman John Lewis and voting rights marchers on Selma\u2019s Edmund Pettus Bridge led the evening news, shocking the nation\u2019s conscience and pushing Congress to act. But two years before \u201cBloody Sunday,\u201d it was LaFayette who quietly set the stage for Selma and the advances in voting rights that would follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">LaFayette was one of a delegation of Nashville students who in 1960 had helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which organized desegregation and voting rights campaigns across the South. SNCC crossed Selma off its map after some initial scouting determined \u201cthe white folks were too mean and the Black folks were too scared,\u201d LaFayette said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But he insisted on trying anyway. Named director of the Alabama Voter Registration Campaign in 1963, LaFayette moved to the town and, with his former wife Colia Liddell, gradually built the leadership capacity of the local people, convincing them change was possible and creating momentum that could not be stopped. He described this work in a 2013 memoir, \u201cIn Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma.\u201d&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HuffPo: &#8220;Bernard LaFayette, the advance man who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died. Bernard LaFayette, III, said his father died Thursday morning of a heart attack. He was 85. On March 7, 1965, the beating&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160574,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160573\/revisions\/160574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}