C.T. Vivian says Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. almost didn’t become a minister and that the people chose him to lead. He discusses Dr King’s ability to listen, his foresight and the importance of Ralph Abernathy to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Civil Rights Movement.
Reverend C.T. Vivian was born July 30, 1924, in Boonville, Missouri, and was one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest advisors. He has spent most of his life committed to nonviolent direct action beginning with one of the earliest and most successful non-violent protest sit-ins in Peoria, Illinois in 1947. In 1954 Vivian moved to Nashville to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary where he became a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He helped organize the student sit-ins in Nashville and rode on the first bus into Jackson, Mississippi as part of the Freedom Rides. In 1961 Dr. King appointed Vivian Director of Affiliates for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which coordinated activities of branches nationwide including the fight to desegregate Birmingham and organize voter registration in Selma. In 1966 Vivian returned to Chicago and spearheaded organizations to support Black children in their education such as the program that would later become Upward Bound. In 2013 President Barack Obama awarded Vivian the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He passed away July 17, 2020.
From the HBO / Kunhardt Film Foundation (KFF) Documentary “King in the Wilderness” that follows Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the last years of his life: from the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to his assassination in 1968, through personal stories of the people who were around him.
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C.T. Vivian, Director of Affiliates, SCLC
Interviewed By: Taylor Branch
Interview Date: April 12, 2017
Chapters
00:00 Meeting Dr. King
16:09 Daddy King
20:37 Nonviolence
35:10 SCLC
43:13 Taking The Movement North
01:04:42 Black Power
01:17:01 Dorothy Cotton and Septima Clark
01:21:41 Dr. King’s Friendships
01:27:49 Vietnam
01:35:28 Depression and Humor
01:42:32 FBI
01:48:47 Dr. King’s Death and Legacy
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