[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 140 (Thursday, August 6, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S5262]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                REMEMBERING THE REVEREND DR. C.T. VIVIAN

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in his powerful eulogy for Congressman 
John Lewis, President Barack Obama described John Lewis as a man who 
``brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals.'' 
President Obama went on to say, ``And someday when we do finish that 
long journey towards freedom, when we do form a more perfect union--
whether it's years from now or decades or even if it takes another two 
centuries--John Lewis will be a founding father of that fuller, fairer, 
better America.'' Such a beautiful and fitting epitaph.
  Another founder of that ``fuller, fairer, better America'' was the 
Reverend Dr. C.T. Vivian. C.T. Vivian and John Lewis departed this life 
on the same day. The timing of their leaving is proof, perhaps, that 
Mark Twain was right when he said that history does not repeat itself, 
but sometimes it rhymes.
  Who was C.T. Vivian? Martin Luther King called him ``the greatest 
preacher ever to live.'' The Reverend Gerald Durley, who met C.T. 
Vivian in 1960 when Durley was a member of the Nashville Student 
Movement and who delivered the eulogy at his home going, called Dr. 
Vivian ``the most patient impatient man'' he ever met. Patient with 
people but impatient with injustice.
  C.T. Vivian was mentor to John Lewis, Diane Nash, and many other 
brave young civil rights activists a half century ago. Before they sat 
at those segregated lunch counters or boarded those Freedom Rider 
buses, Dr. Vivian taught them about the tactics--and the transformative 
power--of nonviolent civil disobedience.
  He was as a Baptist minister, an early civil rights organizer, and a 
member of Martin Luther King's inner circle or advisers. As field 
general for Dr. King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 
Dr. Vivian was the national director of some 85 local affiliate 
chapters of the SCLC from 1963 to 1966, directing protest activities 
and training in nonviolence, and coordinating voter registration and 
community development projects.
  He led passive protests through angry mobs and was beaten viciously 
by segregationists, but he never once struck back. He received his 
first beating in 1961 on a Freedom Ride to Mississippi. In 1964, a 
white mob beat him with chains and nearly drowned him in the Atlantic 
Ocean in St. Augustine, FL.
  In Selma, AL, in 1965, 2 weeks before Bloody Sunday, Dr. Vivian was 
trying to register Africa-American residents to vote when Sheriff Jim 
Clark punched him in the mouth so hard that the blow sent the minister 
reeling down the courthouse steps. Sheriff Clark then ordered deputies 
to arrest him for ``criminal provocation.'' Television coverage of Dr. 
Vivian being dragged away, blood streaming down his face, helped 
galvanize the voting rights movement.
  C.T. Vivian was a hero to all Americans, but many in my State feel a 
special connection to him because of the formative years he spent among 
us. He was, like many great Illinoisans, an adopted son of the Land of 
Lincoln.
  He was born Cordy Tindell Vivian in Boonville, Missouri, on July 30, 
1924, the only child of Robert and Euzetta Tindell Vivian. His father 
left the family when he was a baby. His mother lost the family farm in 
the Depression and the family home in town to arson.
  When C.T. was 6, he moved with this mother and maternal grandmother 
to Macomb, Illinois. The women chose Macomb because its public schools 
were integrated. They had great expectations for C.T. and they believed 
in the power of education. C.T. Vivian joined his first protest in 
Peoria, IL, in 1947, helping to desegregate a downtown cafeteria. In 
many parts of Illinois at the time, segregation of public facilities 
was not a law, but it was a custom rigidly enforced.
  He first heard Dr. King speak in 1957, while studying for the 
ministry at the American Baptist College in Nashville. In 1959, he met 
th Reverend James Lawson, who was teaching nonviolent strategies to 
members of the Nashville Student Movement, including a young John 
Lewis.
  After leaving the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1966, 
Dr. Vivian returned to Illinois--this time to Chicago--to direct the 
Urban Training Center for Christian Missions, where he trained clergy, 
community leaders and others to organize. He worked to advance civil 
rights and educational and economic opportunities for African 
Americans, and to reduce the gang violence that ensnared to many young 
Black men.
  He left Chicago in 1972 to become dean of the Shaw University 
Divinity School in Raleigh, NC. He moved to Atlanta later in the 1970s 
and founded the C.T. Vivian Leadership Institute, to continue to train 
the next generation of leaders in the principals and tactics of 
nonviolent change.
  In 2013, Dr. Vivian received the Presidential Medal of Freedom--our 
Nation's highest civilian honor, from President Barack Obama. It was a 
moving and historic moment and I was honored to be there.
  He died on July 17, 2 weeks shy of his 96th birthday. He is buried in 
Atlanta next to his fellow foot soldier for justice, Dr. King.
  In the last calendar year, we have lost Elijah Cummings, the Reverend 
Dr. Joseph Lowry, John Lewis and Dr. C.T. Vivian--all giants in the 
civil rights movement. This is the passing of a great generation, 
founders of the ``fuller, fairer, better America,'' as President Obama 
said. As we mourn their passing, let us also give thanks for their 
lives, and resolve to use the blueprints they left us to continue 
towards a more perfect union.

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