James Luther Bevel (born 1936) was a civil rights activist of the 1960s who aligned himself with Martin Luther King, Jr.

James Luther Bevel was born in the farming community of Ittabena, Mississippi, on October 19, 1936. This civil rights activist, minister, lyricist, and human rights advocate gained a national reputation for both his impassioned activism and managerial efficiency as one of Martin Luther King's top lieutenants in the freedom struggles of the 1960s. Bevel served briefly in the United States Naval Reserve from 1954 to 1955. He received a B.A. degree from the American Baptist Theology Seminary in 1961. He married another civil rights activist, Diane Judith Nash, and had two children: Sherrillyn Jill and Douglas John Bevel. Ordained in the Baptist ministry in 1959, Bevel pastored a church in Dixon, Tennessee, from 1959 to 1961.

Civil Rights Movement

James Bevel was philosophically committed to the notion that religion was part of the larger human...