C.T. Vivian, Civil Rights Icon, Is Dead at 95

The Rev. C. T. Vivian, a pioneering civil rights organizer and field general for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the historic struggle for racial justice a half-century ago, died on Friday.. He was 95.

His death at his home in Atlanta was confirmed by his friend and business partner Don Rivers, The Associated Press reported.

In a nation trying to come to grips with racial inequality in the 1960s, Mr. Vivian was a paladin of nonviolence on the front lines of bloody confrontations, leading passive protesters through shrieking white mobs and, with discipline and endurance, absorbing the blows of segregationists and complicit law enforcement officials across the South.

Mr. Vivian was a Baptist minister and a member of Dr. King’s inner circle of advisers, alongside Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Wyatt Tee Walker, Ralph Abernathy and other civil rights luminaries. He was the national director of some 85 local affiliate chapters of the S.C.L.C. from 1963 to 1966, directing protest activities and training in nonviolence, and coordinating voter registration and community development projects.

In Selma and Birmingham, Ala.; St. Augustine, Fla.; Jackson, Miss.; and other segregated cities, Mr. Vivian led sit-ins at lunch counters, boycotts against businesses and marches that continued for weeks or months, raising tensions that often led to mass arrests and harsh repressions.

Televised scenes of marchers attacked by police officers and firefighters with cattle prods, snarling dogs, fire hoses and nightsticks shocked the national conscience, legitimized the civil rights movement and led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.