The following biographical sketch was compiled at the time of induction into the Academy in 2025.

Bernard LaFayette Jr. was born in Tampa, Florida, on July 29, 1940, and grew up in Tampa

and in Philadelphia. At the time of the Freedom Rides, he was a student at the American Baptist
Theological Seminary in Nashville and a leader in both the Nashville Student Movement and the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). LaFayette was one of 21 student Freedom
Riders who arrived at the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station on May 20, 1961, and were attacked
by an angry mob. He survived the attack and went on to Jackson, Mississippi, where he was arrested
on a charge of “breach of peace” and spent nearly 40 days in the infamous Parchman Prison. Following
his release, LaFayette remained in Jackson to recruit new Freedom Riders and to organize the Jackson
Nonviolent Movement.

Following the Freedom Rides, LaFayette joined the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and worked on numerous campaigns, including Selma, from 1963 to 1965. He served as the national coordinator for the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. Hours before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, his final conversation with LaFayette included a charge to “institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence.” The challenge shaped LaFayette’s life as an activist, minister, educator, lecturer, and authority on Kingian Nonviolence, the philosophy and
methodology articulated by his mentor.

LaFayette attended the Boston University School of Law. He received a Master of Education from Harvard University in 1972 and a Doctor of Education in 1974. He has taught at several colleges and universities, including the Candler Divinity School at Emory University, where he served as Senior Scholar in Residence. He is a former president of American Baptist College, and he currently serves as chair of the national board of SCLC.

In 2013, LaFayette published a memoir, In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma, written with Kathryn Lee Johnson. The foreword by Congressman John Lewis states, “No one, but no one, who lived through the creation and development of the movement for voting rights in Selma is better prepared to tell this story than Bernard LaFayette himself.” In Peace and Freedom received the prestigious Lillian Smith Book Award in 2014.

LaFayette’s many awards include the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace, presented in November 2016 by Ela Gandhi, the social activist granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, on behalf of the Gandhi Development Trust. He is featured in the book, The Children, by David Halberstam, as well as in numerous documentaries, including When I Get Grown: The Story of How Bernard LaFayette, Jr. Became a Freedom Rider.

LaFayette is married to the former Kate Bulls and is the father of two sons and seven grandchildren.

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