Bevel, James (1936-2008) "Selma"
Early life and education
Born in Itta Bena, Mississippi, Bevel grew up and worked on a cotton plantation, received schooling in Mississippi and Cleveland, Ohio, and served in the U.S. Navy for a time. He attended the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1957 to 1961, and while attending college re-read Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You (he'd first read it while in the Navy, where the book led directly to Bevel's decision to leave the military). Bevel also read several of Mohandas Gandhi's books and newspapers while taking workshops on Gandhi's philosophy and nonviolent techniques taught off-campus by Rev. James Lawson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Bevel also had attended workshops at the Highlander Folk School taught by its founder, Myles Horton.Nashville Student Movement, SNCC
In 1960, along with several of James Lawson's and Myles Horton's other students — Bernard Lafayette, John Lewis, Diane Nash and others — Bevel participated in the 1960 Nashville Sit-In Movement which desegregated the city's lunch counters. After the success of this early movement action, and with the aid of SCLC's Ella Baker, activist students from Nashville and across the South developed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). James Bevel, working on SNCC's commitment to desegregate theaters, successfully strategized and directed the 1961 Nashville Open Theater Movement.Right after the Open Theater Movement's success in Nashville – the only city in the country that had actually organized an action – the Nashville Student Movement's chairman, Diane Nash, told the group that they must continue the 1961 Freedom Rides when the organizers – The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) – called off the Ride after a bus was firebombed in Birmingham. James Bevel was put in charge of choosing which students would go on which bus. He and the others were then arrested when they arrived in Jackson, Mississippi and tried to desegregate the waiting-rooms.
While in the Jackson jail, Bevel and Lafayette initiated the Mississippi Voting Rights Movement. They, Nash, and others stayed in Mississippi to work on what soon became known as the Mississippi Freedom Movement.
Earlier, Lafayette and his wife, Colia Lidell, had opened a SNCC project in Selma, Alabama, to assist the work of local organizers such as Amelia Boynton.
1962 Bevel/King Agreement
In 1962, after several successful years working on and organizing within the Nashville Student Movement and working in the Mississippi Movement, James Bevel was invited to meet with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Atlanta. 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). They agreed that they would work without compromise until they had ended segregation, had obtained voting rights, and assured that all American children had a quality education. They agreed to not stop until these steps occurred, and also to ask for funding for SCLC only if the group was involved in organizing a movement.Bevel soon became SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education to augment Dr. King's positions as SCLC's Chairman and spokesperson.
1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade and its planned March on Washington
As the Bevel-taught students kept marching from the church, Associated Press photographer Bill Hudson took this well-known image of Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being attacked by dogs.
During the Birmingham Children's Crusade, President John F. Kennedy asked Dr. King to stop involving children in the campaign. King told Bevel not to use the students anymore; however, Bevel told King he would not stop the action but would instead now organize the children to march to Washington D.C. to meet with Kennedy about segregation. King agreed. Bevel then went directly to the children, and asked them to prepare to take to the highways on a march to Washington to question Kennedy about correcting the problem of segregation in America. The Kennedy administration, hearing of this plan, asked SCLC's leaders what they would want to see in a comprehensive civil rights bill, which was then written by the Kennedy administration and agreed to by SCLC's leadership, thus ending the need for the children of Birmingham to take to the highways and march to Washington.
Shortly thereafter, in August 1963, SCLC participated in what has become known as the March on Washington, an event organized by labor leader A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, who'd been the original planners of the 1941 March on Washington Movement. Just as the "threat" of the children marching along the highway from Birmingham to Washington led directly to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the threat of the 1941 march led President Franklin Roosevelt to sign the Fair Employment Act, and neither march was actually held.
The Alabama Project and the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement
James Bevel's plan for a march from Selma to Montgomery resulted in "Bloody Sunday". The next march was successfully completed without obstruction.
Starting in late 1963 Bevel, Nash, and Orange organized the voting rights movement in Alabama until, in late 1964, Dr. King and the rest of SCLC came to Selma to work alongside Bevel's and Nash's Alabama Project and SNCC's Voting Rights Project (headed at that time by Prathia Hall and Worth Long). The Bevel/Nash Alabama Project and its SNCC counterpart then became collectively known as the Selma Voting Rights Movement, with James Bevel as its director.
The Selma Voting Rights Movement officially began in early January 1965, grew, and had some minor successes. Then, on February 16, 1965, a young man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, went with his mother and grandfather to participate in a nighttime march led by Reverend C. T. Vivian to protest the movement related jailing of James Orange in Marion, Alabama. After the street lights were turned off by Alabama State Troopers, Jackson was shot in the stomach while defending his mother from an attack by the Troopers as she in turn was defending her father. Jackson died a few days later.
When Bevel heard of Jackson's impending death he walked around outside Selma's Torch Motel until a strategy to redirect the anger of the citizens of Marion and Selma came to him, and after Jackson died he called for a march from Selma to Montgomery to talk to Governor George Wallace about the attack in which Jackson was shot. As the first march reached the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge a large group of marchers — including SNCC Chairman John Lewis and Amelia Boynton — were bludgeoned and tear-gassed in what became known as "Bloody Sunday".
After a court order by Judge Frank Johnson cleared the way for the march to continue, hundreds of religious, labor and civic leaders, many celebrities, and activists and citizens walked the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery. Before this final march occurred, President Lyndon Johnson had gone on national television to address a joint session of Congress and demanded that it pass a comprehensive Voting Rights Act.
Because of the unprecedented success of their 1963-65 Alabama Project, in 1965 SCLC gave its highest honor — the Rosa Parks Award — to James Bevel and Diane Nash.
The 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement
In 1966, Bevel chose Chicago as the site of SCLC's long-awaited Northern Campaign. There he at first worked on "ending" slums and creating tenant unions. He then decided on the main theme of the action: from previous discussions and agreements with Dr. King, and from the ideas and work of American Friends Service Committee activist Bill Moyer, Bevel strategized, organized, and directed the Chicago Open Housing Movement. This movement ended within a Summit Conference that included Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.As the Chicago movement neared its conclusion A. J. Muste, David Dellinger, representatives of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, and others asked Rev. Bevel to take over the directorship of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. After researching the war, and after getting Dr. King's agreement to work with him on this project, Bevel agreed to lead the antiwar effort. He renamed the organization the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, brought many diverse groups into the movement, and strategized and organized the April 15, 1967 march from Central Park to the United Nations Building. 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. During his speech to the crowd that day, Bevel called for a larger march in Washington D.C., a plan that evolved into the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, a large rally attended by many peace activists who followed the growing counterculture movement.
Dr. King's assassination
Rev. Bevel, who witnessed King's assassination on April 4, 1968, reminded SCLC's executive board and staff that evening that Dr. King had left "marching orders" that, if anything should happen to him, Rev. Ralph Abernathy should take his place as SCLC's Chairman. Bevel opposed SCLC's next action, the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, but in order to handle any problems which may have occurred he took on the role of its Director of Nonviolent Education.1984 Congressional bid
Bevel ran and lost as the Republican candidate for Illinois' 7th Congressional District in 1984.Moon and LaRouche involvements
In 1989 Bevel, together with Ralph Abernathy, organized the National Committee Against Religious Bigotry and Racism, a group backed by the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon. Bevel denounced the deprogramming of a Moon follower as reminiscent of the "pre-civil rights mentality" and called for the protection of religious rights. In 1987 Bevel had taken part in a public protest against the Chicago Tribune because of that newspaper's use of the word "Moonies" when referring to Unification Church members. Bevel handed out fliers at the protest which said: "Are the Moonies our new niggers?"Bevel moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in November 1990 as the leader of the "Citizens Fact-Finding Commission to Investigate Human Rights Violations of Children in Nebraska", a group organized by the Schiller Institute. The group, associated with economist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, distributed petitions seeking to reopen the state legislature's two-year investigation into the Franklin child prostitution ring allegations. Bevel never submitted the collected petitions and left the state the following summer. In 1992, Bevel ran as the vice presidential candidate on LaRouche's ticket while that perennial candidate was serving a prison sentence for mail fraud and tax evasion. He engaged in LaRouche seminars on issues including "Is the Anti Defamation League the new KKK?"[ When he introduced LaRouche to a convention of the National African American Leadership Summit in 1996, both men were booed off the stage and a fight broke out between LaRouche supporters and black nationalists.
1995 Day of Atonement/Million Man March
Louis Farrakhan credits Bevel with helping to formulate the 1995 Day of Atonement/Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Its main sponsor was the Nation of Islam.Criminal charges
In May 2007, Bevel was arrested in Alabama on charges of incest committed sometime between October 1992 and October 1994 in Loudoun County, Virginia. Bevel was living in Leesburg, Virginia, at the time and working with LaRouche's group, whose international headquarters was a few blocks from Bevel's apartment.The accuser, one of his daughters, was 13–15 years old at the time, and lived with him in the Leesburg apartment. Three of his other daughters have also alleged that Bevel sexually abused them, although not with intercourse. Charged with one count of unlawful fornication in Virginia, which has no statute of limitations for incest, Bevel pleaded innocent and continued to deny the main accusation. His four-day trial in April 2008 included "testimony about Bevel's philosophies for eradicating lust, and parents' duties to sexually orient their children". During the trial, the accusing daughter testified that she was repeatedly molested beginning when she was six years old.
During the trial, prosecutors used as key evidence against Bevel a 2005 police-sting telephone call recorded by the Leesburg, Virginia police without his knowledge. During that 90-minute call, Bevel's daughter asked him why he had sex with her the one time in 1993, and she asked him why he wanted her to use a vaginal douche afterward. Bevel's response to his daughter was that he had no interest in getting her pregnant. Bevel's statement was used against him during the trial after he denied committing the sexual act.
On April 10, 2008, after a three-hour deliberation, the jury found Bevel guilty, his bond was revoked, and he was taken into custody. The judge sentenced him on October 15, 2008, to 15 years in prison and fined him $50,000. After the verdict, Bevel claimed that the charges were part of a conspiracy to destroy his reputation, and said that he might appeal. He received an appeal bond on November 4, 2008, and was released from jail three days later, six weeks before his death from pancreatic cancer, at the age of 72, in Springfield, Virginia, as reported by his daughter Sherrilynn.
Bevel's attorney requested that the Court of Appeals of Virginia abate the conviction (effectively clearing Bevel's name) on account of his death. The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the trial court to determine whether there was good cause not to abate the conviction. The trial court found that abating the conviction would deny the victim the closure that she sought and denied the motion to abate. The Court of Appeals affirmed this judgment. Bevel's attorney appealed the denial of the abatement motion to the Supreme Court of Virginia. In an opinion issued November 4, 2011, the Supreme Court held that abatement of criminal convictions was not available in Virginia under the circumstances of Bevel's case and, because the executor of Bevel's estate had not sought to prosecute the appeal, the Court affirmed the conviction.
In popular culture
Actor and rapper Common portrays Bevel in the 2014 film Selma.
Interview: Common On James Bevel And The Real-Life Superheroes of ‘Selma’
Musician-turned actor Common may’ve burned up TV screens recently as Elam Ferguson in “Hell On Wheels,” but he takes a sincere and promising turn as Civil Rights leader James Bevel in Director Ava DuVernay’s highly-praised film, “Selma” which chronicles the momentous marches that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
With a striking resemblance to the young Bevel, Common infuses a contemporary defiance into the character. I caught up with Common to discuss his elation at getting the role, his research into the real-life James Bevel, and why he sees “Selma” as a superhero film in its own right.
"Selma" opens in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Atlanta Christmas Day. It opens nationwide January 9th.
Shadow & Act: How did you get involved with the project?
Common: I met Ava at Sundance and had a lot of respect and reverence for her, and I knew about the film because I’d auditioned for it four years ago with David (Oyelowo). I did a reading for it and after that, David and I bonded but it didn’t happen so when I got the call that I was going to get the chance to meet with Ava, and she was interested in me playing James Bevel, I was like- I live for this. It’s a movement.
S&A: What was the process of getting into the character and into the backstory of James Bevel?
Common: For me, it was definitely reading about him and then I had access to some people who lived and knew James Bevel, and were part of the SCLC so I talked to them about different things. It was more about watching footage about King and his team and really getting to know James Bevel as much as possible because he lived, and when you’re a character that truly lived, you want to bring the truth out of that and the spirit of who that person is out of respect for him and his life, so I did that.
James Bevel and
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Common: One of the most valuable things I got from the movie was that Dr. King was the chosen one but there were so many that contributed to him being the chosen one, so many that contributed to the movement and it wasn’t just him. One person can win the war, but it took many different people and many people we don’t know their names, some we do. It could be Annie Lee Cooper to Cager Lee to Jimmie Lee Jackson who died, to CT Vivian and some people that are still living that walked those streets and walked over those bridges and contributed and we’ll never know.
But what I loved is that you got to see that it took the community to make this happen and it brought many people together and these individuals were superheroes in their own way. When I was doing it, I was like, man this is a superhero movie in a way because each person brought something to the table- Diane Nash, James Bevel, CT Vivian and they were ordinary people but they did extraordinary things so I loved the fact that you know this because we only knew about Martin Luther King Jr. but to know about these other individuals and to pay homage to some of the nameless individuals, I love that Ava approached it from that perspective.
S&A: Definitely, just to see Jimmie Lee Jackson’s family and his mother crying, was a really powerful part of the film-
Common: Yeah, that scene was a really tough scene and my daughter actually saw part of that. We had walked into the editing room for a second to say hi to Ava and my daughter as soon as she saw it, she’s 17, she just started tearing up because I guess it’s her getting to see what people went through so that she can go to any school she wants to go to, and be able to hang out with different friends, whether white, Latino, or Asian. That’s what "Selma" and people of the SCLC, that’s what they created for us.
S&A: What were some of the conversations you got in on set, being in a place where this history took place but you’re reenacting it, were there any interactions or experiences during the filming that have stayed with you?
Common: When John Lewis came to visit the set and when he talked to us, and he told me about James Bevel and he told us about Diane Nash - just him coming and his presence. Him actually calling us by the characters names- he was like “You look just like James” and it was just really encouraging and supportive and he said, the only type of trouble they wanted to get in was good trouble, and trouble for a real cause. They obviously were put into jail and resisted, and not even resisted, but standing up for certain things because they were doing it for a cause.
The moments I got to have with the ambassador Andrew Young, John Lewis, the conversations we were having, we were talking about what these characters were going through and at the same time, all of us were grateful for being there. Our hearts were in it and every person there was committed and Ava was a true catalyst for making everybody feel wanted and feel important.
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