ATLANTA – The Rev. CT Vivian, a civil rights veteran who worked alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and served as head of the organization co-founded by the civil rights icon, died.
Vivian died at her Atlanta home of natural causes on Friday morning, her friend and business partner Don Rivers confirmed to The Associated Press. Vivian was 95 years old.
His civil rights work spanned more than six decades, until his first sit-ins in the 1940s in Peoria, Illinois. She met King shortly after the incipient civil rights leader’s victory in the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. Vivian became an active member of what would become the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
“He has always been one of the people who had the greatest insight, wisdom, integrity and dedication,” said Andrew Young, who also worked alongside King.
Cordy Tindell Vivian was born on July 28, 1924 in Howard County, Missouri, but moved to Macomb, Illinois, with her mother when she was still a child.
When she was a young theology student at American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee, Vivian helped organize that city’s first sit-ins, and then participated in Freedom Rides in Mississippi. Under King’s leadership at SCLC, Vivian was the national director of affiliates, and after King’s death in 1968, she continued to serve the organization.
Although he was already a veteran of the movement, Vivian returned to lead the SCLC in 2012 as its interim president. Some saw his return to leadership as renewed credibility and a tangible link to the era after the SCLC stalled for years due to financial mismanagement and internal strife.
“There should always be an understanding of what Martin had in mind for this organization,” Vivian said in a 2012 interview. “Nonviolent direct action makes us successful. We learned to solve social problems without violence. We cannot allow the nation or the world to ever forget it. “
Vivian suffered a stroke about two months ago, but seemed to be recovering, Rivers said. Then, “she just stopped eating,” she said.
Rivers, 67, said he was 21 when he met Vivian at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Back then, he worked as an audio director when Vivian was the dean of the university’s theology school. The two stayed together over the years and Rivers said he handled the business side of Vivian’s work.
“He is such a kind, gentle and brave man,” Rivers said, adding that the reverend was not for the money, but “he was always giving, giving, giving.”
President Barack Obama honored Vivian with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. The reverend had continued to advocate for justice and equality in recent years.
