Watertown to Host Famed Civil Rights Activist

WATERTOWN, MA - A prominent civil rights leader, minister and educator will pay a visit to Watertown students and share his experiences as an advocate for equality.

The Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr. is set to appear Thursday at Transforming Conflict: Lessons from a Civil Rights Leader, a symposium hosted by Watertown Public Schools, the World in Watertown and the Watertown Police Department.

Dr. LaFayette co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an activist group that eschewed violent protests, in 1960 at the age of 20. He became a a key member of the civil rights movement in Nashville, Tenn. and Selma, Ala. throughout the 1960s, serving as director of the Alabama Voter Registration Project in 1962, national program administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and national coordinator of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign. He was a close ally of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who appointed him to his positions in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Poor People's Campaign.

For close to four decades, Dr. LaFayette has taken various roles in higher education, working on the faculties of Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta and Alabama State University in Montgomery, where he was Dean of the Graduate School.

He has also been the principal of Tuskegee Institute High School in Tuskegee, Alabama and a teaching fellow at Harvard University. Over the course of his career he has published many works on peace and nonviolence.

Tranforming Conflict: Lessons from a Civil Rights Leader will be held Thursday, March 31 in the Watertown Middle School auditorium at 68 Waverly Ave. It will run from 7-9 p.m.

The Watertones, Watertown High School's a cappella group, will also perform.

Photo Credit: Watertown Police Department's Facebook page