C. T. Vivian

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Reverend C. T. Vivian (born July 28, 1924 in Boonville, Missouri) is a minister and was a close friend and lieutenant of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. during the American Civil Rights Movement.

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[edit] Background

As a small boy he migrated with his mother to Macomb, Illinois, where he attended Lincoln Grade School and Edison Junior High School. Rev. Vivian graduated from Macomb High School in 1942 and went on to attend Western Illinois University in Macomb, where he worked as the sports editor for the school newspaper. His first professional job was recreation director for the Carver Community Center in Peoria, Illinois. There, Rev. Vivian participated in his first sit-in demonstrations, which successfully integrated Barton's Cafeteria in 1947.

Studying for the ministry at American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1959, Rev. Vivian met Rev. James Lawson, who was teaching Mahatma Ghandhi's nonviolent direct action strategy to the Student Central Committee. Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, James Bevel, James Forman, John Lewis and other students from American Baptist, Fisk University and Tennessee State University executed a systematic nonviolent campaign for justice. On April 19, 1960, 4,000 demonstrators marched on City Hall where Rev. Vivian and Diane Nash challenged Nashville Mayor Ben West. As a result, Mayor West publicly agreed that racial discrimination was morally wrong. Many of those students became part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

[edit] Work with Martin Luther King and SCLC

In 1961, Rev. Vivian, now a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) participated in Freedom Rides replacing injured members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

He founded the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference, organizing the first sit-ins there in 1960 and the first civil rights march in 1961. Rev. Vivian was a rider on the first "Freedom Bus" into Jackson, Mississippi, and went on to work alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his Executive Staff in Birmingham, Selma, Chicago,Nashville, the March on Washington; Danville, Virginia, and St. Augustine, Florida. During the summer following the Selma Movement, Rev. Vivian conceived and directed an educational program, Vision, and put 702 Alabama students in college with scholarships. The program later became Upward Bound.

[edit] Recent work

Rev. Vivian has been featured as an activist and an analyst in the civil rights documentary, Eyes on the Prize, and has been featured in a PBS special, The Healing Ministry of Dr. C. T. Vivian. He has made numerous appearances on Oprah as well as the Montel Williams Show and Donahue. Rev. Vivian is the focus of the biography, Challenge and Change by Lydia Walker and he is author of Black Power and the American Myth , which was an Ebony Book Club selection.

[edit] Further reading