A civil rights hero’s posthumous memoir a guidebook for today’s activists
Standing on the steps of a courthouse, the Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian pleaded for the right of every person to vote with “verbal jabs” when a sheriff literally jabbed him, beating and knocking him to the ground.
The Baptist minister and director of national affiliates for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had led a group of people to register to vote in Selma, Alabama, on February 16, 1965.
“I had to get back up because otherwise people would have been defeated by violence. We can never allow violence to defeat nonviolence,” he wrote in the memoir, which comes out March 9 and is co-authored by Steve Fiffer.