Georgia's Coalition for the People's Agenda; Alabama Civic Affairs Association; Black Leadership Forum; Lowery Institute
Joseph Echols Lowery (October 6, 1921 – March 27, 2020) was an American minister in the United Methodist Church and leader in the civil rights movement. He founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr. and others, serving as its vice president, later chairman of the board, and its third president from 1977 to 1997. Lowery participated in most of the major activities of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and continued his civil rights work into the 21st century. He was called the "Dean of the Civil Rights Movement".[1]
Joseph E. Lowery was born to Leroy and Dora Lowery on October 6, 1921. His mother was a teacher and his father owned a small business in Alabama.[3] When he was 11, he was abused and punched by a white police officer for not getting off the sidewalk as a white man was passing. Lowery ran home to get a gun, but his father arrived and talked him out of it.[4] His family sent him away while he attended middle school in Chicago, staying with relatives, but he returned to Huntsville, Alabama, to complete William Hooper Councill High School.[5] He attended Knoxville College and Alabama A&M College. Lowery graduated from Paine College. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.[3]
He attended ministerial training at Payne Theological Seminary and later on, he completed a Doctor of Divinity degree at the Chicago Ecumenical Institute.[5] He married Evelyn Gibson in 1950, a civil rights activist and leader in her own right. She was the sister of the late Harry Gibson, an activist, and elder member of the Northern Illinois conference of the United Methodist Church, Chicago area. She died on September 26, 2013.[6] They had three daughters: Yvonne Kennedy, Karen Lowery, and Cheryl Lowery-Osborne.[7] Lowery also had two sons, Joseph Jr. and LeRoy III, from an earlier marriage to Agnes Moore.[8]
American civil rights career
Lowery was pastor of the Warren Street Methodist Church,[9] in Mobile, Alabama, from 1952 to 1961. His career in the Civil Rights Movement took off in the early 1950s. After Rosa Parks' arrest in 1955, he helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. He headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, an organization devoted to the desegregation of buses and public places. In 1957, along with Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, and others, Lowery founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and subsequently led the organization as its president from 1977 to 1997.[5][1]
Lowery's car and other property, along with that of other civil rights leaders, was seized in 1959 by the State of Alabama to pay damages resulting from a libel suit. The Supreme Court of the United States later reversed this decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. At the request of King, Lowery participated in the Selma to Montgomery march of 1965.[10] He was a co-founder and president of the Black Leadership Forum, a consortium of blackadvocacy groups. This Forum protested the existence of Apartheid in South Africa from the mid-1970s through the end of white minority rule there. Lowery was among the first five black men to be arrested outside the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C., during the Free South Africa movement. He served as the pastor of Cascade United Methodist Church in Atlanta from 1986 through 1992, adding over a thousand members and leaving the church with 10 acres (40,000 m2) of land.[4][11]
In 2006, at Coretta Scott King's funeral, Lowery received a standing ovation when he denounced the violence of war in Iraq compared to injustice for the poor, remarking before four U.S. presidents in attendance:
We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor!
Conservative observers said his comments were inappropriate in a setting meant to honor the life of Mrs. King, especially considering George W. Bush was present at the ceremony.[22][23]
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, 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. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen! Say Amen! And Amen! [24]
A number of conservative pundits including Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and Michelle Malkin criticized this final passage, accusing it of being "divisive"[25] and "racialist".[26][27][28] Reporters in attendance called the passage a mocking of racial stereotypes, and said that the crowd received it with good humor.[29][30][31]
^ abKirkland, W. Michael (2004). "Joseph Lowery (b. 1924)". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Staff editors (2019). Georgia Humanities and the University of Georgia Press.
^Kaufman, Jonathan (January 21, 2009). "Celebration Stirs a New Racial Optimism". "The Rev. Joseph Lowery, in his closing prayer, drew laughter when he mocked racial stereotypes and prayed for a day "when black will not be asked to get back...". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 22, 2009.
^Grossman, Cathy Lynn (January 20, 2009). "Rev. Joseph Lowery's impassioned benediction". "Lowery also brought a smile to the president with a recitation he's used before, asking God to ...". USA Today. Retrieved January 22, 2009.
