King disciple, Freedom rider, still converting

By Angela Tuck

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Charles Alphin Sr. used to scoff at the notion of nonviolence transforming communities. The former St. Louis police captain had frequently experienced racism and was skeptical of the tactics used by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern activists.

“I didn’t follow Dr. King and didn’t think what he was doing would work,” he said. “I didn’t understand it.”

Then Alphin met Bernard LaFayette Jr., a King lieutenant who has made nonviolence his life’s work and continues to preach its message today, a half-century after the civil rights movement. He believes nonviolent techniques can be used to combat everything from school bullying to gang violence.

LaFayette is a Distinguished Senior Scholar-in-Residence at Emory’s Candler School of Theology. In 1961, while a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary, LaFayette joined the “Freedom Rides,” a movement that led to the enforcement of federal desegregation laws in interstate travel. In 1968, he led King’s Poor People’s Campaign, aimed at shining a light on poverty and its causes.

Alphin and LaFayette joined forces in 1975 to address disparities between black and white high school students in St. Louis. LaFayette, a native of Tampa, was serving as an associate pastor at the time and both men had children at the school. Alphin didn’t know LaFayette’s history, but was struck by his resolve. When he got to know him, and learned about the nonviolent protests he’d been a part of, “I was like a sponge,” he said.

“Dr. LaFayette is a master. He leads from the rear. He lets you come at your own pace, and it took me 10 years,” Alphin said. “I would come down to The King Center and I would take it back [home]. I was a sergeant in a drug-infested community.”

The drugs, he said, were a symptom of bigger issues. He and others began to look at what was driving the behavior — the lack of recreational facilities, high dropout rates and unemployment.

“The police stop crime with the help of other institutions in the communities,” he said. “We mobilized and opened up a community center with no budget.”

Alphin came to work at the King Center in 1992, certifying people to train others in nonviolence.

LaFayette, now 70, remembers the irony of the conversation he had with King in his hotel room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on the morning of April 4, 1968. Later that day, as LaFayette was traveling to Washington, D.C., to set up for the Poor People’s Campaign, King was assassinated.

“He told me he wanted to institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence,” LaFayette said. “Even when people do unkind things to us, we respond in a kindly manner. That’s the whole concept that Martin Luther King advocated, coming from his religious upbringing. ... An eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth, leads to a blind, toothless society,” he said.

Not just a philosophy

In 1996, the former Freedom Rider established LaFayette & Associates to teach the foundations of nonviolence. The firm works with the King Center on training projects.

“In our teaching, we help people to understand that King wasn’t just talking about tactics or a philosophy, but a way of life,” said LaFayette. “He wasn’t just talking about social change, but interpersonal change. Sometimes we do more violence toward the people we love. [We] are helping people to change within themselves, to become better parents, better children.”

A key component of the training is that you don’t challenge people’s values, Alphin said. “We ask them questions, like, ‘Does a gun protect you?’ and ‘What is the definition of a man?’” In sessions, they urge people to disagree, define their disagreements and argue constructively.

LaFayette and Alphin, now a senior trainer with the firm, have traveled the world teaching King’s principles. Working with the Nigerian government, they have trained more than 25,000 rebels to put down their weapons and practice nonviolence in exchange for job training and forgiveness of war crimes.

And in Colombia, a notorious prison — Bellavista — that had an average of six murders a day is now a center for nonviolence.

Life-changing lesson

Closer to home, 22-year-old LeAnna Rankin is now a convert.

A shoplifting conviction landed the College Park woman in an Atlanta Municipal Court program aimed at helping first-time offenders get their lives back on track.

“It was just a stupid decision,” she said of the crime. Community service is a requirement of her sentence. But one weekend, program coordinator Regina Cannon had a different idea: Her charges would take a course in nonviolence.

“I thought it would be boring,” said Rankin. “I didn’t think I’d learn as much from it as I did. Just to have somebody that has been through what Dr. LaFayette has been through. ... You read about it in school, but to see somebody who is telling you stories from actual historical events is unheard of.”

Rankin now has her mind set on college and making a better life for herself and her young son. “It takes dedication and patience,” she said of the training in nonviolence. “You just have to practice it and hope somebody embodies what you displayed.”