|
FILE -
In this
Oct. 4,
2017,
file
photo,
the Rev.
Joseph
E.
Lowery
arrives
for his
96th
Birthday
Tribute
at
Rialto
Center
for the
Arts in
Atlanta.
Lowery,
a
veteran
civil
rights
leader
who
helped
the Rev.
Martin
Luther
King Jr.
found
the
Southern
Christian
Leadership
Conference
and
fought
against
racial
discrimination,
died
Friday,
March
27,
2020, a
family
statement
said. He
was 98.
(Curtis
Compton/Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
via AP,
File)
|
|
Joseph
Lowery,
civil
rights
leader
and MLK
aide,
dies at
98
By
The
Associated
Press
ATLANTA
- The
Rev.
Joseph
E.
Lowery
fought
to end
segregation,
lived to
see the
election
of the
country’s
first
black
president
and
echoed
the call
for
“justice
to roll
down
like
waters
and
righteousness
like a
mighty
stream”
in
America.
For
more
than
four
decades
after
the
death of
his
friend
and
civil
rights
icon,
the Rev.
Martin
Luther
King
Jr., the
fiery
Alabama
preacher
was on
the
front
line of
the
battle
for
equality,
with an
unforgettable
delivery
that
rivaled
King’s —
and was
often
more
unpredictable.
Lowery
had a
knack
for
cutting
to the
core of
the
country’s
conscience
with
commentary
steeped
in
scripture,
refusing
to back
down
whether
the
audience
was a
Jim Crow
racist
or a
U.S.
president.
“We
ask you
to help
us work
for that
day when
black
will not
be asked
to get
in back;
when
brown
can
stick
around;
when
yellow
will be
mellow;
when the
red man
can get
ahead,
man; and
when
white
will
embrace
what is
right,”
Lowery
prayed
at
President
Barack
Obama’s
inaugural
benediction
in 2009.
Lowery,
98, died
Friday
at home
in
Atlanta,
surrounded
by
family
members,
they
said in
a
statement.
He
died
from
natural
causes
unrelated
to the
coronavirus
outbreak,
the
statement
said.
“Tonight,
the
great
Reverend
Joseph
E.
Lowery
transitioned
from
earth to
eternity,”
The King
Center
in
Atlanta
remembered
Lowery
in a
Friday
night
tweet.
“He was
a
champion
for
civil
rights,
a
challenger
of
injustice,
a dear
friend
to the
King
family.”
Lowery
led the
Southern
Christian
Leadership
Conference
for two
decades
—
restoring
the
organization’s
financial
stability
and
pressuring
businesses
not to
trade
with
South
Africa’s
apartheid-era
regime —
before
retiring
in 1997.
Considered
the dean
of civil
rights
veterans,
he lived
to
celebrate
a
November
2008
milestone
that few
of his
movement
colleagues
thought
they
would
ever
witness
— the
election
of an
African-American
president.
At
an
emotional
victory
celebration
for
President-elect
Barack
Obama in
Atlanta,
Lowery
said,
“America
tonight
is in
the
process
of being
born
again.”
An
early
and
enthusiastic
supporter
of Obama
over
then-Democratic
opponent
Hillary
Clinton,
Lowery
also
gave the
benediction
at
Obama’s
inauguration.
“We
thank
you for
the
empowering
of thy
servant,
our 44th
president,
to
inspire
our
nation
to
believe
that,
yes, we
can work
together
to
achieve
a more
perfect
union,”
he said.
In
2009,
Obama
awarded
Lowery
the
Presidential
Medal of
Freedom,
the
nation’s
highest
civilian
honor.
In
another
high-profile
moment,
Lowery
drew a
standing
ovation
at the
2006
funeral
of
King’s
widow,
Coretta
Scott
King,
when he
criticized
the war
in Iraq,
saying,
“For
war,
billions
more,
but no
more for
the
poor.”
The
comment
also
drew
head
shakes
from
then-President
George
Bush and
his
father,
former
president
George
H.W.
Bush,
who were
seated
behind
the
pulpit.
Lowery’s
involvement
in civil
rights
grew
naturally
out of
his
Christian
faith.
He often
preached
that
racial
discrimination
in
housing,
employment
and
health
care was
at odds
with
such
fundamental
Christian
values
as human
worth
and the
brotherhood
of man.
“I’ve
never
felt
your
ministry
should
be
totally
devoted
to
making a
heavenly
home. I
thought
it
should
also be
devoted
to
making
your
home
here
heavenly,”
he once
said.
Lowery
remained
active
in
fighting
issues
such as
war,
poverty
and
racism
long
after
retirement,
and
survived
prostate
cancer
and
throat
surgery
after he
beat Jim
Crow.
His
wife,
Evelyn
Gibson
Lowery,
who
worked
alongside
her
husband
of
nearly
70 years
and
served
as head
of
SCLC/WOMEN,
died in
2013.
“I’ll
miss
you,
Uncle
Joe. You
finally
made it
up to
see Aunt
Evelyn
again,”
King’s
daughter,
Bernice
King,
said in
a tweet
Friday
night.
Lowery
was
pastor
of the
Warren
Street
Methodist
Church
in
Mobile,
Alabama,
in the
1950s
when he
met
King,
who then
lived in
Montgomery,
Alabama.
Lowery’s
meetings
with
King,
the Rev.
Ralph
David
Abernathy
and
other
civil
rights
activists
led to
the
SCLC’s
formation
in 1957.
The
group
became a
leading
force in
the
civil
rights
struggle
of the
1960s.
Lowery
became
SCLC
president
in 1977
following
the
resignation
of
Abernathy,
who had
taken
the job
after
King was
assassinated
in 1968.
He took
over an
SCLC
that was
deeply
in debt
and
losing
members
rapidly.
Lowery
helped
the
organization
survive
and
guided
it on a
new
course
that
embraced
more
mainstream
social
and
economic
policies.
Coretta
Scott
King
once
said
Lowery
“has led
more
marches
and been
in the
trenches
more
than
anyone
since
Martin.”
He
was
arrested
in 1983
in North
Carolina
for
protesting
the
dumping
of toxic
wastes
in a
predominantly
black
county
and in
1984 in
Washington
while
demonstrating
against
apartheid.
He
recalled
a 1979
confrontation
in
Decatur,
Alabama,
when he
and
others
were
protesting
the case
of a
mentally
disabled
black
man
charged
with
rape. He
recalled
that
bullets
whizzed
inches
above
their
heads
and a
group of
Klan
members
confronted
them.
“I
could
hear
them go
‘whoosh,’”
Lowery
said.
“I’ll
never
forget
that. I
almost
died 24
miles
from
where I
was
born.”
In
the
mid-1980s,
he led a
boycott
that
persuaded
the
Winn-Dixie
grocery
chain to
stop
selling
South
African
canned
fruit
and
frozen
fish
when
that
nation
was in
the grip
of
apartheid.
He
also
continued
to urge
blacks
to
exercise
their
hard-won
rights
by
registering
to vote.
“Black
people
need to
understand
that the
right to
vote was
not a
gift of
our
political
system
but came
as a
result
of
blood,
sweat
and
tears,”
he said
in 1985.
Like
King,
Lowery
juggled
his
civil
rights
work
with
ministry.
He
pastored
United
Methodist
churches
in
Atlanta
for
decades
and
continued
preaching
long
after
retiring.
Born
in
Huntsville,
Alabama,
in 1921,
Joseph
Echols
Lowery
grew up
in a
Methodist
church
where
his
great-grandfather,
the Rev.
Howard
Echols,
was the
first
black
pastor.
Lowery’s
father,
a
grocery
store
owner,
often
protested
racism
in the
community.
After
college,
Lowery
edited a
newspaper
and
taught
school
in
Birmingham,
but the
idea of
becoming
a
minister
“just
kept
gnawing
and
gnawing
at me,”
he said.
After
marrying
Evelyn
Gibson,
a
Methodist
preacher’s
daughter,
he began
his
first
pastorate
in
Birmingham
in 1948.
In a
1998
interview,
Lowery
said he
was
optimistic
that
true
racial
equality
would
one day
be
achieved.
“I
believe
in the
final
triumph
of
righteousness,”
he said.
“The
Bible
says
weeping
may
endure
for a
night,
but joy
cometh
in the
morning.”
A
member
of Alpha
Phi
Alpha
fraternity,
Lowery
is
survived
by his
three
daughters,
Yvonne
Kennedy,
Karen
Lowery
and
Cheryl
Lowery.
|
|
|
|
|
|