Bernard LaFayette, Selma voting rights organizer, dies at 85

U.S. Bernard LaFayette, civil rights leader and Selma voting rights organizer, dies at 85 Updated on: March 5, 2026 / 10:45 PM EST / CBS/AP Add CBS News on Google Bernard LaFayette, the advance man who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died, according to the Associated Press. Bernard LaFayette, III, said his father died Thursday morning of a heart attack. He was 85. On March 7, 1965, the beating of future congressman John Lewis and voting rights marchers on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge led the evening news, shocking the nation's conscience and pushing Congress to act. But two years before "Bloody Sunday," it was LaFayette who quietly set the stage for Selma and the advances in voting rights that would follow. LaFayette was one of a delegation of Nashville students who in 1960 had helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which organized desegregation and voting rights campaigns across the South. SNCC crossed Selma off its map after some initial scouting determined "the White folks were too mean and the Black folks were too scared," LaFayette said. But he insisted on trying anyway. Named director of the Alabama Voter Registration Campaign in 1963, LaFayette moved to the town and, with his former wife Colia Liddell, gradually built the leadership capacity of the local people, convincing them change was possible and creating momentum that could not be stopped. He described this work in a 2013 memoir, "In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma." The many dangers LaFayette faced included an assassination attempt on the same night Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi, in what the FBI said was a conspiracy to kill civil rights workers. LaFayette was beaten outside his home before his assailant pointed a gun at him. His calls for help brought out a neighbor with a rifle. LaFayette found himself standing between the two men, asking his neig...