Joseph Lowery

• Born: October 6, 1921
• Birthplace: Huntsville, Alabama
• Died:March 27, 2020
• Place of death: Atlanta, Georgia

Civil rights activist and religious leader

Best known for his involvement in the civil rights movement, Lowery played an active role in leading the Montgomery bus boycott. He also was one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Early Life

Joseph Echols Lowery was born on October 6, 1921, in Huntsville, Alabama, to LeRoy and Dora Lowery. He attended middle school in Chicago and completed high school in Alabama. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, and was accepted at Paine Theological Seminary, where he pursued his calling to become a minister. Dedicated to obtaining a wealth of knowledge and divine understanding, Lowery completed a doctorate in divinity at Chicago Ecumenical Institute.

In 1950, Lowery married Evelyn Gibson. The couple had three daughters: Yvonne, Karen, and Cheryl.

Lowery was a minister in the United Methodist Church for four decades. In 1952, Lowery was named pastor of Warren Street United Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama, a post he held for nearly ten years. He went on to serve at Atlanta's Central United Methodist Church from 1968 to 1986 and Cascade United Methodist Church from 1986 to 1992.

Lowery showed himself to be a vocal leader, within both the church and the civil rights movement. His penchant for speaking his mind earned him respect and acclaim, but also often created controversy.

Activism

Lowery’s civil rights activism began during the early 1950s in Mobile, where he led the Alabama Civic Affairs Association. A major focus of the organization was desegregation of buses and other public facilities. Jim Crow laws consistently presented obstacles for the Black community, and the association’s members were determined to take a stand. Lowery and other prominent ministers publicly denounced discrimination and segregation. Consequently, the ministers were sued for libel by the state of Alabama. The ministers lost the case, and their property was seized as part of a settlement, but the Supreme Court later reversed the decision.

Despite his legal troubles, Lowery continued his activism. At the request of Martin Luther King Jr., Lowery led the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. His boldness proved effective. Lowery and King continued to work closely, founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Lowery served as vice president of the organization for some time and served as president for twenty years. During his time as president, he negotiated with corporations to diversify their staffs and contract with minority businesses. He also was involved in a number of peace delegations, promoted antipoverty measures, and tried to reduce violence through a gun buyback program.

In 1977, Lowery cofounded the Black Leadership Forum, a consortium of Black advocacy groups. He also served a term as its president. During the late 1970s, the forum began protesting apartheid in South Africa. Its advocacy continued until the end of the apartheid era and the election of Nelson Mandela. Lowery was one of the first activists to be arrested at the South African Embassy in Washington, DC.

Lowery was a respected leader in the Black community throughout his career. In 1979, amid a rash of disappearances of Black youths in Atlanta, Lowery urged faith, perseverance, and safety. Such sentiments helped the community to heal and to work together. Lowery also had a role in the passage of the Voting Rights Act, desegregation of public accommodations in Nashville, Tennessee, and the hiring of the first Black police officers in Birmingham, Alabama.

After his retirement in 1997, Lowery remained active as a speaker and social commentator. At the funeral for Coretta Scott King in 2006, he made pointed comments about the war in Iraq and injustice in America. Particularly controversial was his reference to “weapons of misdirection”—a play on “weapons of mass destruction,” which President George W. Bush had cited as justification for going to war with Iraq. In 2009, Lowery was asked to deliver the benediction at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Lowery also drew mixed reactions for his remarks at this engagement, invoking a Big Bill Broonzy song to urge Americans to work for a day “when black will not be asked to get back . . . and when white will embrace what is right.”

In his final decades, Lowery continued to engage in activist causes. He launched a voter education and registration initiative, the Coalition for the People's Agenda, in 1998. He also advocated for LGBT rights; opposed lethal injection, police brutality, and environmental injustice; and sought to change the Georgia state flag, which incorporated the Confederate battle flag.

Lowery died on March 27, 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Significance

Lowery played an important role in the push for Black equality. The Joseph and Evelyn Lowery Institute for Justice & Human Rights, founded in 2001, carries on Lowery's legacy of nonviolent agitation for social justice.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) named him a dean of the civil rights movement and presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 in honor of his contributions. He also received the Martin Luther King Jr. Center Peace Award and the Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama on July 30, 2009. He also received a dozen honorary degrees and about thirty other awards, and had an Atlanta street renamed after him. His experiences in the civil rights movement were recorded in a 2011 oral history by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Library of Congress American Folklife Center, and University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.

Bibliography

Byrne, Dara N. The Unfinished Agenda of the Selma-Montgomery Voting Rights March. John Wiley & Sons, 2005.

Lowery, Joseph. “Heaven Can Wait.” My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience, edited by Juan Williams. Foreword by David Halberstam, afterword by Marian Wright Edelman. Sterling, 2004.

Martin, Douglas. “Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, Civil Rights Leader and King Aide, Dies at 98.” The New York Times, 28 Mar. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/joseph-lowery-dead.html. Accessed 28 Oct. 2020.

Peake, Thomas R. Keeping the Dream Alive: A History of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from King to the 1980’s. P. Lang, 1987.