Charles Kenzie Steele

Charles Kenzie Steele (February 17, 1914 – (1980-08-19)August 19, 1980) was a preacher and a civil rights activist.

He was one of the main organizers of the 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott, and a prominent member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

He then began preaching in Toccoa and Augusta, Georgia, then in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Hall Street Baptist Church (1938–1952).

Steele was also a part of many other protests, marches, and boycotts, where he helped to accomplish integration in many public places.

Steele helped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957.

Florida State University conferred on Steele the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 1980—the first to an African American, and the first to be bestowed in fifty-six years from that school.