Civil rights veteran Rev CT Vivian dead at 95

The Rev. CT Vivian, a civil rights veteran who worked alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and served as head of the organisation co-founded by the civil rights icon, has died.

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, has died. Vivian died at home in Atlanta of natural causes Friday morning, his friend and business partner Don Rivers confirmed to The Associated Press. Vivian was 95.

His civil rights work stretched back more than six decades, to his first sit-in demonstrations in the 1940s in Peoria, Ill. He met King soon after the budding civil rights leader's victory in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. 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 most insight, wisdom, integrity, and dedication,” said Andrew Young, who also worked alongside King.

Cordy Tindell Vivian was born July 28, 1924, in Howard County, Mo., but moved to Macomb, Ill., with his mother when he was still a young boy. As a young theology student at the American Baptist College in Nashville, Tenn., Vivian helped organize that city's first sit-ins and later participated in the Freedom Rides in Mississippi. Under King's leadership at SCLC, Vivian was the national director of affiliates, and after King's death in 1968, he continued to serve the organization.

Though 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 lending renewed credibility and a tangible link to the era after the SCLC stagnated for years due to financial mismanagement and infighting. “There must 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 how to solve social problems without violence. We cannot allow the nation or the world to ever forget that.” President Barack Obama gave Vivian the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

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