‘COURAGEOUS MAN’

C.T. Vivian, Civil-Rights Hero, MLK Lieutenant, Dies at 95

Honoring him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, President Obama said: “Time and again, Rev. Vivian was among the first to be in the action.”

Rev. C.T. Vivian—the civil-rights icon who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama—has died at 95. Vivian died at home in Atlanta on Friday morning, according to his friend and business partner Don Rivers, two months after he appeared to have recovered from a stroke. Vivian’s leadership in civil rights began in the 1940s with sit-in demonstrations in Illinois and stretched right up until his final years. The Associated Press reports that Vivian met King in 1955 and became a senior member of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Under King’s leadership at SCLC, Vivian was national director of affiliates and continued to serve the organization after King’s death in 1968. He returned to lead the SCLC in 2012 as interim president. When honoring him in 2013, Obama said of Vivian: “Time and again, Rev. Vivian was among the first to be in the action.”