Rep. Randall Gaines Lauds SCLC Chairman, Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr.

By: Prof. Maynard Eaton, Editor- in- Chief

“I consider Dr. Bernard LaFayette a Civil Rights gladiator”

Louisiana State Representative Randal Gaines speaks of SCLC’s 82-year-old National Board Chairman Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr with reverence, awe and admiration.

“A gladiator is a courageous fighter that must make the ultimate sacrifice. So, the term gladiator appropriately applies to the role Dr. LaFayette played and the commitment he has made to the Civil Rights Movement, opines Rep. Gaines. “As far as his role in Selma, and I’ve studied it extensively, just out of appreciation for what I know about the contributions he made I was intrigued.

“As I’ve learned more and more about the role he played I was really beyond impressed. I’m astonished actually,” he continues. “I had a conversation with him in his home in July and we talked for about two hours. I had no idea that he was on the ground and intimately involved in some of the actions that shaped the direction of the whole Selma Movement”.

After a decade in office, Rep. Gaines has now emerged as Louisiana's top Black elected official and arguably its most influential. He is also a prominent attorney, civil rights activist and the Vice Chair of SCLC’s Board of Directors.

“I had a conversation with him in his [Tuskegee, Alabama] home in July and we talked for about two hours,” Gaines reveals. “I had no idea that he was on the ground and intimately involved in some of the actions that shaped the direction of the whole Selma Movement.” Because of that it is puzzling why Dr. LaFayette doesn’t get the praise and multi-media accolades his contemporaries have from historians, pundits and the civil rights community by most accounts. When the most highly regarded and popularly known civil rights leaders - such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Ambassador Andrew Young, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, Rev. C.T. Vivian, Rev. Hosea Williams and Dr. Joseph Lowery - are discussed or written about Dr LaFayette is infrequently mentioned. That is arguably because the 82-year-old is among the few living legends of that fading civil rights era, plus he is reticent regarding self-aggrandizement.

“I find that to be true,” Gaines agrees and laments that director Ava DuVernay failed to have an actor portraying Dr. LaFayette in her acclaimed 2014 movie Selma. He told DuVernay that there should have been when he hosted the 2015 SCLC National Convention in Baton Rouge. “I presented her with a Louisiana Legislative Proclamation for opening the Civil Rights Movement to a whole new generation of activists and Black Americans,” Gaines recalls. “There is no way [Dr. LaFayette] shouldn’t have been in that movie, and he said he wasn’t sure why? I’m saying it is not historically accurate. [Directors] will take some parts of history and mesh it with creativity for it be informative and entertaining,”

Gaines adds, “Based on what I see occurring today I think he is finally getting his recognition. “Like some of the people we have learned about and respect in The Movement, many of them knew how to gravitate towards the press,” Gaines affirms. “Many of them knew how to incite interest in themselves in the media. Sometimes it was for the cause; sometimes it was self-interest. Dr LaFayette was not inclined to seek self-adulation, but it doesn’t mean his role was no less impactful than those who did.”

The Voting Rights Act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson, outlawing the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War.

Today, some allege it has come full circle from what it meant then to how it is applied now. “Based on my studies,” says the scholarly Gaines during our robust interview, “in 1961 Dr. LaFayette told James Foreman, who was the program coordinator for SNCC, ‘I will take Selma.’ When you look at the tragedies that occurred in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement, in hindsight you realize how courageous that was. Several people lost their lives in the Selma Movement itself and the role they played in Selma in terms of fighting for voting rights for Blacks in Selma.

“Selma was the biggest challenge in the South. Only 10 percent of the eligible Black electorate in the deep South were registered to vote. In Selma and Shelby County it was only one percent. For Dr. LaFayette to take on that role; that was an extremely courageous step that he took. He was the first one to go in. His actual title was director of SNCC’s Alabama Voter Registration Project.”

That was in 1963. SNCC was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, then chaired by the late Congressman John Lewis.

Selma was ground zero for voting rights in this country. Selma was the door opening for every political achievement that Blacks have made in America. It evolved and was created by the success of the Selma Movement.

Six months after the passage of the Voting Rights Act 450,000 Blacks in the deep South were registered to vote.

“It showed you the watershed effect of that Act,” opines Gaines. “It showed you the tremendous impact of that Act, and the tremendous achievement that it was brought about by SNCC and SCLC. It was a social justice achievement of epic proportions and the organizing that they did served as a model for those seeking their civil and human rights worldwide.”

Dr. Bernard LaFayette was the pioneering architect.

“He laid the foundation,” Gaines says. “Dr Martin Luther King just didn't just show up in Selma. Dr. LaFayette’s role was to generate interest and generate the need of why it was important to vote, He told me that he tied the right to vote to their everyday lives and how it would impact them personally if they went out to vote. He convinced them that if they fought for their right to vote, their lives were going to change.”

During our riveting interview, I asked Gaines what Dr. LaFayette means to him and America’s current crop of elected Black political leaders?

“I speak for countless other office holders when I say that I pay tribute mentally, orally to people like Dr. LaFayette and Dr. King every time I undertake a cause that is going to benefit Black people because I would not be able to do that had they not put their lives on the line for me to do it. I look to Dr. LaFayette as my mentor. I depend on him for inspiration, information and confirmation on how to make an impactful difference. He knows what it takes.”

Maynard Eaton is an eight time Emmy Award-winning multi-media journalist and the SCLC National Communication Director. After obtaining a Masters in Journalism at Columbia University, he has been featured on television and print outlets in Norfolk, Miami and Atlanta, where he has extensively covered civil rights luminaries including Andrew Young, CT Vivian, John Lewis, Bernard LaFayette and others. As an educator he has taught at Clark Atlanta University for two decades. Eaton was named Endowed Professor of Journalism at his Alma Mater Hampton University in 2022.

By: Ainka Jackson