Jospeh Lowery obit

Joseph Lowery, civil rights leader and aide to Martin Luther King Jr., dies at 98

He was not on the list.

Joseph E. Lowery, a civil rights leader who was among the prominent ministers who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and later served as the group’s president for 20 years, died March 27 at his home in Atlanta. He was 98.

His family announced his death in a statement. The cause was not disclosed, but his family said it was not related to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The Rev. Lowery’s civil rights work began in the late 1950s when he helped start the SCLC, a nonviolent civil disobedience organization. He was a member of the SCLC board and traveled often to meet with King and other leaders to help steer the organization, providing advice and participating in protests at the height of racial unrest in the South.

In 1963, a last-minute decision to take a late-night train home to Nashville to see his wife saved Rev. Lowery’s life. The Birmingham, Ala., hotel room King had offered him that night was bombed. No one was killed, but Rev. Lowery often recalled how close he came to dying. He later used that and other near-death experiences to describe himself and other participants in the civil rights movement as “a little crazy, good crazy,” willing to risk their lives to shake up the segregated South and usher in equal rights for blacks.

Joseph E. Lowery, a civil rights leader who was among the prominent ministers who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and later served as the group’s president for 20 years, died March 27 at his home in Atlanta. He was 98.

His family announced his death in a statement. The cause was not disclosed, but his family said it was not related to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The Rev. Lowery’s civil rights work began in the late 1950s when he helped start the SCLC, a nonviolent civil disobedience organization. He was a member of the SCLC board and traveled often to meet with King and other leaders to help steer the organization, providing advice and participating in protests at the height of racial unrest in the South.

In 1963, a last-minute decision to take a late-night train home to Nashville to see his wife saved Rev. Lowery’s life. The Birmingham, Ala., hotel room King had offered him that night was bombed. No one was killed, but Rev. Lowery often recalled how close he came to dying. He later used that and other near-death experiences to describe himself and other participants in the civil rights movement as “a little crazy, good crazy,” willing to risk their lives to shake up the segregated South and usher in equal rights for blacks.

Often working in the background, Rev. Lowery adopted a higher profile in March 1965, at the end of the five-day, 54-mile “Bloody Sunday” march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. After the march, he became chairman of a committee appointed to take protesters’ demands to Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace.

Rev. Lowery described walking to the State Capitol steps and seeing a sea of blue-uniformed state troopers standing in front of the governor’s office. The National Guard was there too, authorized to protect Rev. Lowery. The guardsmen tramped in front of the state troopers and Rev. Lowery passed through.

“Moses had the Red Sea, I had the blue sea,” he said in a 2008 interview with The Washington Post.

Rev. Lowery was also one of the four black ministers sued in the seminal case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), in which an Alabama official accused the newspaper and the civil rights leaders of libeling him in an advertisement. The ad was intended to raise money for King’s defense against felony charges related to his 1956 and 1958 Alabama tax returns, but the lawsuit caught Lowery by surprise. He and the other defendants had not been informed that their names would be used in the ad.

Joseph E. Lowery, a civil rights leader who was among the prominent ministers who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and later served as the group’s president for 20 years, died March 27 at his home in Atlanta. He was 98.

His family announced his death in a statement. The cause was not disclosed, but his family said it was not related to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The Rev. Lowery’s civil rights work began in the late 1950s when he helped start the SCLC, a nonviolent civil disobedience organization. He was a member of the SCLC board and traveled often to meet with King and other leaders to help steer the organization, providing advice and participating in protests at the height of racial unrest in the South.

In 1963, a last-minute decision to take a late-night train home to Nashville to see his wife saved Rev. Lowery’s life. The Birmingham, Ala., hotel room King had offered him that night was bombed. No one was killed, but Rev. Lowery often recalled how close he came to dying. He later used that and other near-death experiences to describe himself and other participants in the civil rights movement as “a little crazy, good crazy,” willing to risk their lives to shake up the segregated South and usher in equal rights for blacks.

Often working in the background, Rev. Lowery adopted a higher profile in March 1965, at the end of the five-day, 54-mile “Bloody Sunday” march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. After the march, he became chairman of a committee appointed to take protesters’ demands to Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace.

Rev. Lowery described walking to the State Capitol steps and seeing a sea of blue-uniformed state troopers standing in front of the governor’s office. The National Guard was there too, authorized to protect Rev. Lowery. The guardsmen tramped in front of the state troopers and Rev. Lowery passed through.

“Moses had the Red Sea, I had the blue sea,” he said in a 2008 interview with The Washington Post.

Rev. Lowery was also one of the four black ministers sued in the seminal case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), in which an Alabama official accused the newspaper and the civil rights leaders of libeling him in an advertisement. The ad was intended to raise money for King’s defense against felony charges related to his 1956 and 1958 Alabama tax returns, but the lawsuit caught Lowery by surprise. He and the other defendants had not been informed that their names would be used in the ad.

An all-white jury initially ordered the ministers to pay $500,000 each. Rev. Lowery’s 1958 Chrysler Imperial sedan and other property were seized in Mobile, Ala., and sold at a state-ordered auction. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually vindicated the ministers in a landmark ruling and set a higher standard in defamation lawsuits by establishing the precedent that public officials must prove that a defendant knowingly and maliciously made false statements about them.

Rev. Lowery’s stature and reputation grew as he outlived many other civil rights leaders. Following King’s assassination in 1968, the SCLC became rudderless and beset with infighting. By the time Rev. Lowery was elected SCLC president in 1977, the organization was $10,000 in debt and membership had fallen drastically.

Rev. Lowery raised money and returned the organization to solvency while focusing it on a new set of civil rights issues.