[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 90 (Friday, June 25, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1282-E1283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  IN RECOGNITION OF REV. DR. JOSEPH E. LOWERY ON THE EVE OF THE 40TH 
              ANNIVERSARY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JULIA CARSON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 25, 2004

  Ms. CARSON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, on the 40th anniversary of the 
Civil Rights Act of 1964, now is an especially appropriate time to 
acknowledge and commend the historic contributions of a great civil 
rights fighter, The Reverend Doctor Joseph E. Lowery.
  Dr. Lowery is the Co-founder, President Emeritus, Southern Christian 
Leadership Conference (SCLC), Chairman Emeritus, Black Leadership 
Forum, Inc. and Convener of the Georgia Coalition for the People's 
Agenda (GEPA).
  As co-founder with Martin Luther King, Jr., of the SCLC in 1957; Dr. 
Lowery served as vice president (1957-67); chairman of the board (1967-
77); and as president and chief executive officer from Feb. 1977-Jan. 
15, 1998. Dr. King named him chairman of the delegation to take demands 
of the Selma-to-Montgomery March (1965) to Gov. George Wallace. Wallace 
had ordered the marchers beaten (``Bloody Sunday'') but apologized to 
Lowery in 1995 as he led the 30th anniversary re-enactment of the 
historic march, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
  His genesis as a civil rights advocate was in the early `50s in 
Mobile, AL where he headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, which 
led the movement for the desegregation of buses and public 
accommodations. While in Mobile, his property was seized by the Alabama 
courts in an historic libel suit: Sullivan v. NYTimes, Abernathy, 
Lowery, Shuttlesworth, & Seay. The U.S. Supreme Court vindicated the 
ministers in a landmark ruling on libel (Read Make No Law by Anthony 
Lewis, 1964)
  Lowery led the historic Alabama to Washington pilgrimage (1982) to 
free Maggie Bozeman and Julia Wilder, falsely convicted of voter fraud. 
This march helped gain the extension of provisions of the Voting Rights 
Act to 2007. Nationally recognized as a strong proponent of affirmative 
action, he also led the movement in Nashville to desegregate public 
accommodations. In Birmingham, he served as president of the 
Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, which spearheaded the hiring 
of Birmingham's first black police officers, etc. As a United Methodist 
minister, he was elected as delegate to three General Conferences, and 
presided over an Annual Conference (acting bishop in 1966.
  He is co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Black leadership Forum, 
a consortium of national black advocacy organizations, and served as 
third president following Vernon Jordan and Benjamin Hooks. As 
president of SCLC, he negotiated covenants with major corporations for 
employment advances and business contracts with minority companies. One 
of the first protest campaigns he led was against the Atlanta based 
Southern Company

[[Page E1283]]

for contracting to purchase ten million tons of coal from South Africa 
(12977). He was among the first five persons arrested at the South 
African Embassy in Washington, D.C. in the ``Free South Africa'' 
campaign (1984). He co-chaired the 1990 Nelson Mandela visit to Atlanta 
following his release from prison and awarded Mandela the SCLC/Martin 
Luther King, Jr. Human Rights Award. He was keynote speaker at the 
African Renaissance Dinner in Durban in 1998 honoring Mandela's 
retirement. He was invited to keynote the dedication of a school and 
hospital in East Germany honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. He led a 
peace delegation to the Middle East and met with the president of 
Lebanon and Yassir Arafat to seek justice in the Middle East by non-
violent means. He led protests against the dumping of toxic waste in 
Warrenton County, N.C., and was arrested twice in this campaign which 
gave birth to the environmental justice movement.

  He served on the board of directors of MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta 
Rapid Transit Authority) for 23 years and was chairman for three years 
(during the '96 Olympics), and was instrumental in securing millions in 
contracts for minority businesses. Since retiring from the pulpit in 
1997 and SCLC in January 1998, he has helped black farmers secure a 
federal court decree valued at $2 billion against the Department of 
Agriculture for discrimination. He assisted black auto dealers to seek 
redress from discrimination claims against auto manufacturers. He has 
supported black concert promoters in their fight against exclusionary 
policies of talent agencies. As convener of the Georgia Coalition for 
the People's Agenda (CPA), he is active in election reform and voter 
empowerment, economic justice, criminal justice reform, including 
alternative sentencing and a moratorium on the death penalty.
  He is married to Evelyn Gibson Lowery, an activist in her own right, 
founder of SCLC/WOMEN and is the father of five children.
  Lowery has received numerous awards, including an NAACP Lifetime 
Achievement Award and the Martin Luther King Center Peace Award. 
Essence has twice named him as one of the Fifteen Greatest Black 
Preachers. Lowery is married to Evelyn Gibson Lowery, an activist in 
her own right.

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