James Luther Bevel (October 19, 1936 – December 19, 2008) was an American minister, leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and convicted child molester.

Bevel also attended workshops at the Highlander Folk School taught by its founder, Myles Horton, who emphasized grassroots organizing.

[16] The Open Theater Movement, led by Bevel, had success in Nashville, the only city in the country where SCLC activists had organized such an action.

After buses and riders were severely attacked, including a firebombing of a bus and beatings with police complicity in Birmingham, Alabama, CORE suspended the rides.

[17] Diane Nash, the Nashville Student Movement's chairman, urged the group to continue the Freedom Rides, and called for college volunteers from Fisk and other universities across the South.

Eventually, the Freedom Riders reached their goal of New Orleans, Louisiana, generating nationwide coverage of the violence to maintain Jim Crow and white supremacy in the South.

Lafayette and his wife, Colia Lidell, also opened an SNCC project in Selma, Alabama, to assist the work of local organizers such as Amelia Boynton.

At that meeting, which had been suggested by James Lawson, Bevel and King agreed to work together on an equal basis, with neither having veto power over the other, on projects under the auspices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

[citation needed] In 1963, SCLC agreed to assist its co-founder, Fred Shuttlesworth, and others in their work on desegregating retail businesses and jobs in Birmingham, Alabama, where discussion and negotiations with city officials had yielded few results.

The national and international media covered the story, and photographs of the force used against schoolchildren generated public outrage against the city and its officials.

[7] Bevel went to the children and asked them to prepare to take to the highways for a march on Washington, with the goal of questioning the President about his plans to end legal segregation in America.

[7] Hearing of this plan, and in response to the city's violent treatment of the students, the Kennedy administration asked SCLC's leaders what they wanted in a comprehensive civil rights bill.

Practices such as requiring payment of poll taxes and literacy tests administered in a discriminatory way by white officials maintained the exclusion of blacks from the political system in the 1960s.

SNCC had been conducting a Voting Rights Project (headed by Prathia Hall and Worth Long) since the early 1960s, meeting with violence in Alabama.

In late 1963 Bevel, Nash, and Orange also worked with local grassroots organizations to educate blacks and support them in trying to gain registration as voters, but made little progress.

They invited King and other SCLC leaders to Selma to develop larger protests and actions, and work alongside Bevel's and Nash's Alabama Project.

On February 16, 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson, his mother, and grandfather took part in a nighttime march led by C. T. Vivian to protest the related jailing of activist James Orange in Marion, Alabama.

He suggested a march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital, to protest Jackson's death and press Governor George Wallace to support voting rights for African Americans.

[10] As the first march reached the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and passed out of the city, they were attacked by county police and Alabama State Troopers.

Following the nationwide publicity generated by Jackson's death and the previous attack on peaceful marchers, hundreds of religious, labor and civic leaders, many celebrities, and activists and citizens of many ethnicities traveled to Selma to join the march.

Even before the final march occurred, President Lyndon Johnson had gone on national television to address a joint session of Congress, appealing for passage of his administration-backed comprehensive Voting Rights Act.

In 1965 SCLC gave its highest honor, the Rosa Parks Award, to James Bevel and Diane Nash for their work on the Alabama Voting Rights Project.

From previous discussions with King, and from work of American Friends Service Committee activist Bill Moyer, Bevel organized, and directed the Chicago open housing movement.

As the Chicago movement neared its conclusion A. J. Muste, David Dellinger, representatives of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, and others asked Bevel to take over the directorship of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

Originally planned as a rally in Central Park, the United Nations Anti-Vietnam War March became the largest demonstration in American history to that date.

[25][26] Due to the violence that ensued during the strike in which 60 people were injured and one was killed, Bevel was among those whom the city of Memphis filed a formal complaint against in the District Court.

This was financially backed by the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, which appeared to be trying to improve its controversial image by allying with such respected leaders.

[35] The commission was associated with conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, and sought to persuade the state legislature to reopen its two-year investigation into the Franklin child prostitution ring allegations.

[40] During the trial, prosecutors presented key evidence: a 2005 police-sting telephone call recorded by the Leesburg police without Bevel's knowledge.

In an opinion issued November 4, 2011, the commonwealth's Supreme Court held that abatement of criminal convictions was not available in Virginia under the circumstances of Bevel's case.