Civil rights activist Bernard Lafayette to speak March 8

Bernard Lafayette, longtime civil rights activist and organizer, will present “Nonviolence in a Time of Civil Unrest: Yesterday and Today” at 8 p.m. March 8 in the Nebraska Union Auditorium.

From May to November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives by traveling together on buses and trains through the Deep South to fight segregation. Lafayette, then a 20-year-old college student, was among the original Freedom Riders. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the riders met bitter racism, mob violence and imprisonment along the way, testing their belief in nonviolent activism. Lafayette was brutally beaten and arrested during the Freedom Rides and several other times for his participation in the civil rights movement.

Lafayette played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma Voting Rights Movement; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and American Friends Service Committee. He was national coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. He later became founding director of the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. He is considered an authority on strategies for nonviolent social change.

The March 8 event, sponsored by UPC Nebraska and the Office of Academic Success and Intercultural Services, is free for students with a valid NCard and $5 for faculty, staff and the public.