Joseph Echols Lowery
Date of birth:	October 6, 1921 (1921-10-06) (age 88)
Place of birth:	Huntsville, Alabama, USA
Movement:	American Civil Rights Movement
Major organizations:	Southern Christian Leadership Conference Alabama Civic Affairs Association Black Leadership Forum Lowery Institute
Notable prizes:	Presidential Medal of Freedom 2009

For the engraver, see Joseph Wilson Lowry.

Joseph Echols Lowery (born October 6, 1921) is a minister in the United Methodist Church and leader in the American civil rights movement.

In 2004 Rev. Lowery was honored at the "International Civil Rights Walk of Fame" at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, located in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the National Park Service, the Walk of Fame was created "to give recognition to those courageous soldiers of justice who sacrificed and struggled to make equality a reality for all."^[1]

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Joseph E. Lowery was born to LeRoy and Dora Lowery on October 6, 1921. He attended middle school in Chicago while staying with relatives, returning to Huntsville to complete high school. He then attended Knoxville College and Alabama A&M College before earning a bachelor of arts at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. He then entered the Paine Theological Seminary to become a minister. Later he completed a doctorate of divinity at the Chicago Ecumenical Institute.^[2] He married Evelyn Gibson in 1950, a civil rights activist and leader in her own right. She is the sister of the late Rev. Dr. Harry Gibson an activist, and Elder member of the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church, Chicago Area.

Lowery has three daughters: Yvonne, Karen, and Cheryl. His grandson is actor and model Vaughn Lowery.

[edit] American civil rights career

Lowery was pastor of the Warren Street United Methodist Church, in Mobile, Alabama from 1952 until 1961. His career in the civil rights movement began in the early 1950s in Mobile, Alabama. After Rosa Parks' arrest in 1955, Lowery helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. He headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, an organization devoted to the desegregation of buses and public places. In 1957, with Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and subsequently led the organization as its president from 1977 to 1997.

His property was seized in 1959 along with that of other civil rights leaders by the State of Alabama as part of a libel suit. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the suit reversed. At the request of Martin Luther King Jr., Lowery led the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965. Lowery is a co-founder and former president of the Black Leadership Forum, a consortium of black advocacy groups. The Forum protested Apartheid in South Africa in the mid 1970s until the election of Nelson Mandela. Joseph Lowery was among the first five African Americans to get arrested at the South African Embassy in Washington D.C. during the Free South Africa movement. Lowery served as pastor of Cascade United Methodist Church in Atlanta from (1986-92), adding over a thousand members and leaving the church with 10 acres (40,000 m²) of land. He is now retired but remains active in the civil rights movement.

To honor Reverend Lowery, the City of Atlanta renamed Ashby Street for him. Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard is just west of downtown Atlanta and runs north-south beginning at West Marietta Street near the campus of Georgia Tech and stretching to White Street in the West End neighborhood, running past Atlanta's Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Morris Brown College. Perhaps not coincidentally, the street intersects both Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive and Ralph David Abernathy Freeway.

Reverend Lowery has advocated for LGBT civil rights,^[3] including civil unions, but is more hesitant on same-sex marriage.^[4]

[edit] Awards

Reverend Joseph E. Lowery has received several awards. The NAACP gave him an award at its 1997 convention for, "dean of the civil rights movement," and Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also received the Martin Luther King Jr. Center Peace Award and the National Urban League's Whitney M. Young, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. Ebony has named him one of the 15 greatest black preachers, describing him as, "the consummate voice of biblical social relevancy, a focused voice, speaking truth to power.” Lowery has also received several honorary doctorates from colleges and universities including, Dillard University, Morehouse College, Alabama State University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Lowery was Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama on July 30, 2009.^[5]. He was also given the Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute that year.^[6]

[edit] Coretta Scott King's funeral and controversy

In 2006, at Coretta Scott King's funeral, Dr. Lowery received a standing ovation when he remarked before four U.S. Presidents in attendance:

We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor!

Conservative observers claimed his comments were inappropriate in a setting meant to honor the life of Mrs. King, especially considering President Bush was present at the ceremony.^[7][8] None of Mrs. King's family has objected to Lowery's words.^[9]

[edit] President Barack Obama's inauguration benediction

On January 20, 2009, Dr. Lowery delivered the benediction at the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America. He opened with lines from "Lift Every Voice and Sing," also known as "The Negro National Anthem," by James Weldon Johnson. He concluded with the following, an interpolation of Big Bill Broonzy's "Black, Brown and White":

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get [in] back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen! Say Amen! And Amen! ^[10]

This final passage drew criticism for being "divisive",^[11] or "racialist",^[12] from some commentators.^[13][14] Reporters in attendance called the passage a mocking of racial stereotypes, and said that the crowd received it with good humor.^[15][16][17]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Joseph Lowery

• Joseph Lowery's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project
• The HistoryMakers biography
• January 24, 2006 lecture at John Carroll University
• Lowery Institute
• Freedom Road Blog on Lowery's Broonzy Reference in Benediction