Page 2 - Florida Sentinel 4-16-19

Feature
Renowned Civil Rights Activist’s Mission Started When He Was 7
BY KENYA WOODARD Sentinel Feature Writer
Bernard Lafayette’s
career as a civil rights activist began when he was just seven years old.
On that day in 1947, Lafayette and his grand- mother had paid their fares to catch the Tampa streetcar. Because public transporta- tion was segregated, the two could pay at the front of the trolley, but had to board in the back. Lafayette had just climbed on when the conduc- tor began pulling away – be- fore his grandmother could catch on.
She ran to catch up to the trolley, but fell in the road.
“I felt so incompetent,” he said. “I felt so weak and pow- erless.”
It was in the moment
A mind and soul sticking experience when Tampa native Bernard Lafayette was 7-years-old led to his life’s work as a civil rights activist. Mr. Lafayette told his story at USF last week. USF professor, Ray Arsenault was the facilitator.
to get grown.”
Lafayette, one of the or-
ganizers of the Student Non- violent Coordinating Committee, shared on Thurs- day some stories about his journey as an activist as part of “Champions of Civil Rights and Civility,” an event hosted by The Open Partnership Education Net- work (OPEN), the Commu- nity Foundation of Tampa Bay, and the University of South Florida.
Born and raised in Tampa, as a young man, Lafayette moved to Nashville to attend college. He was roommates with fel- low activist and now-Con- gressman John Lewis, but initially resisted Lewis’s invites to get involved with sit-ins and protests.
“I had three jobs going,” he said. “I told John I didn’t have no time for any work- shops.”
Eventually, Lewis wore him down and Lafayette agreed to go to protest plan- ning meeting. It was then that Lafayette “got hooked.”
“That’s what I was look- ing for since I was seven, a way to fight segregation,” he said. “I got excited.”
Lafayette said he be- came a student of the Mar- tin Luther King, Jr.’s and others adoption of different strategies and tactics to fight oppressive regimes and sys- tems.
“We have to understand... strategies,” he said. “If you have enough people who will break the law and accept that, you could break (the law).”
Lafayette also became involved heavily in the move-
ment, participating in sit-ins and Freedom Rides. In the summer of 1961, he was on a Freedom Ride from Nashville to New Orleans when he and other partici- pants decided to go to Jack- son, Miss., after then-Gov. Ross Barnett made a strong public stand against the activists.
“We decided to make Jackson our beachhead,” he said. “Your beachhead is where your final battle is fought. We had to make sure we had enough power and support to make the change we needed to make.”
The students were ar- rested and jailed for weeks, Lafayette said.
“We went down there and we filled the jails,” he said.
Civil rights activism has been Lafayette’s life work since those days as a college student and he’s gone on to teach protest strategy all over the world, including Colum- bia and South Africa. He’s also shared his knowledge in American prisons through the ‘Alternatives to Prison Vi- olence,’ a program that trains inmates how to manage con- flicts to avoid riots.
It took three months to desegregate the lunch coun- ters in Nashville. And while part of that is thanks to the agitation of student activists, it’s also because their efforts broke down those who had the power to reverse those racist policies, Lafayette said.
“No revolution has ever been won except winning over the sympathy of the ma- jority,” he said. “The strate- gies of nonviolence is to win people over as supporters.”
when trying to help his grandmother get back on her feet that Lafayette decided he would devote his life to eradicating systems of racism and oppression that resulted
in their being humiliated and treated poorly.
“I said to myself ... when I get grown I’m going to do something about this prob- lem,” he said. “I couldn’t wait
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