Civil rights legend Walker to visit Lynchburg

A civil rights activist and former chief of staff to Martin Luther King Jr. is coming to Lynchburg to voice support for recent race relations and anti-violence efforts in the city.

Wyatt Tee Walker is scheduled to speak at Providence Ministries International, 400 Oakley Ave., on Saturday.

Saturday’s event is open to the public and scheduled to begin at
3 p.m.

According to a news release from Churches United for Service, the speech will be in support of the group’s anti-violence efforts, as well as Lynchburg’s Community Dialogue on Race and Racism.

As the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and chief of staff for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from 1960 to 1964, Walker was a key figure in organizing marches and protests that helped galvanize the nation’s attention on injustices in the Jim Crow South.

Walker, who was born in Massachusetts in 1929, came to Richmond in 1946 to attend Virginia Union University, where he earned his undergraduate and divinity degrees.

He held his first pulpit at Gillfield Baptist Church in Petersburg, where he began more organized civil-rights work in the 1950s. That work brought him to King’s attention.

Walker circulated King’s legendary “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the occasion for King’s timeless “I Have a Dream” speech.

That same year, Walker was the chief architect of “Project C,” a series of boycotts and demonstrations aimed at desegregating Birmingham, Ala.

In later years, he was instrumental in battling apartheid in South Africa and has been active in other international human-rights movements.

He still receives invitations to speak at social justice conferences. He has traveled to nearly 100 countries to advance the cause of equality.