Joseph Lowery, Organizer for Justice

By DON ROLLLINS

“We ain’t going back. We’ve come too far, marched too long, prayed too hard, wept too bitterly, bled too profusely and died too young, to let anybody turn back the clock on our journey to justice.” - Joseph Lowery, 1921-2020

Were he only remembered as a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, would still have deserved the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon him back in 2009. But to students of racial justice in America, Lowery’s many other contributions to the cause merit him a place among the most influential African Americans of the 20th century.

Closely allied with Dr. King and hailed as the unofficial “dean of the modern civil rights movement” Lowery, who died last month at 98, cast the mold for King lieutenants by insisting on organized action grounded in liberationist Christianity.

In tandem with activist Evelyn Gibson Lowery, his wife of 63 years, he was that rare combination of community organizer and brash visionary. Starting in the early 1950s, Lowery used these gifts to form coalitions in his native Alabama; at one point resulting in a failed attempt to seize his home. Soon thereafter he was serving as a grassroots consultant for nonviolent resistance throughout the Deep South - including the March from Selma to Montgomery - yet also taking full advantage of press coverage..

But Lowery’s dual skills were stretched to the limit over the course of his 20-year tenure as president of the SCLC, from 1977-1997. The organization had fallen on hard times, and was struggling financially and organizationally. Lowery is credited with restoring the Conference to an even keel, focusing its resources on antiracism, overseas as well as domestically.

Upon retirement from the SCLC, the Loweries spent the next phase of their lives in parish ministry, yet continuing their separate and joint activism. By then their scope of activism had become intersectional in nature, ranging from poverty to voting interference, earth justice to LGBTQ+ rights.

Even as he aged, Lowery continued to publically challenge power and privilege. Asked in 2006 to speak at the funeral of Coretta Scott King, he used the occasion to take a swipe at the U.S. excursion into Iraq. With Bushes One and Two seated just behind the podium.

And in what has since become an epic moment in the history of presidential inaugural benedictions, Lowery prayed over Obama’s first term with characteristic poetry and prophecy: “...Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back; when brown can stick around; when yellow will be mellow; when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.”

Lowery’s at points grating circa 2009 use of language and images notwithstanding, the prayer lifted that cold January day was in every other way in keeping with the best of what he and his generation of champions were about. While not all were as brash, neither were they all as effective.

For many, Lowery stands out in the context of Black civil rights leaders as one of the tacticians without whom the movement might have stalled for lack of focus. In death as in life, he reminds us justice without action is just another name for the status quo.

Postscript: When Joseph and Evelyn Lowery’s America eventually rises from the carnage wrought by COVID-19 — and in whatever form, it will — racism and poverty will not only be waiting, but will have been made worse by healthcare and economic responses favoring the privileged. Something to think about If you’re wondering where to put some dollars or time.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2020

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