The Rev. James Orange, it once was noted, rarely showed up in photos of prominent civil rights leaders, though he couldn't help but stand out in a crowd.

Orange was well over 6 feet tall and 300 pounds with a booming baritone and strong views he was willing to share even when they might put his head in the way of a ball bat.

W.A Bridges Jr./Staff (ENLARGE)

The Rev. James Orange (left) and the Rev. Joseph Lowery at a civil rights event in Atlanta in 2004.

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"He didn't have to have the spotlight," said his daughter Jamida Orange. "He was a humble man."

Though he didn't attract the attention of others in the movement, the longtime southwest Atlanta resident, who died unexpectedly at 65 Saturday night at Emory Crawford Long Hospital, was an invaluable force in awakening the American South to racial injustice, those who knew him said.

"He was in all the right places for all the right struggles," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Sunday.

Without Orange, for example, there might have been no march from Selma to Montgomery — beginning a train of events that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Jackson said.

The death of Jimmie Lee Jackson — killed by an Alabama state trooper while protesting the incarceration of Orange, who had been jailed for registering new voters — is regarded as one of the triggers for that famous march.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference founder Joseph Lowery was even more emphatic.

"Without James Orange, there would have been no movement across the deep South," Lowery said. The SCLC hired the Birmingham native as a field staffer in 1965.

Orange was indispensable, Lowery said. "He was fearless and people rallied around him because of his spirit and his genuine love for people."

Said Andrew Young: "He was one of the first heroes. He is one of those people who never got the recognition, or the wealth or fame that he made possible for others."

Orange got involved in the civil rights movement in 1957, becoming known for his freedom singing. The SCLC took note of him when he helped build what became a huge crowd for a rally in Selma, Ala., that featured King.

"I guess they said if anyone can turn out a crowd like this, they need to be put on the payroll," Orange later recalled.

His job, he said, "was to go into town and motivate" people, "to get them to the point of doing whatever had to be done."

That might mean marching down to a school in Birmingham and singing of Alabama's then-governor, "Ol' Wallace, you never can jail us all. Ol' Wallace, segregation is bound to fall."

Students, he said, "would just leave school and march with us downtown."

King called Orange and others like him members of his "ground crew," which was a compliment, Young noted, because, "the plane can't take off without the ground crew."

Orange's job wasn't always as easy as walking down the street and singing to a group of schoolkids. He often was beaten, in keeping with the local sentiment of the day, and was nearly lynched while in an Alabama jail.

Throughout, he held to the philosophy of nonviolence, reflecting peace with dignity.

To that end, he recalled, "I'd take a hit. I'd take a lick, a whupping — without retaliating. But I never, not once, went limp in a demonstration. I would walk to the truck, or they'd beat me to the truck, but I still wouldn't go limp. I never would."

Orange was clever enough to avert confrontation when prudence required it, however. Once, when driving with colleagues in a 1957 Mercury from Louisiana to Alabama, with SCLC printed on the side, a highway patrolman pulled him over.

The patrolman asked if the letters were "a civil rights thing."

"Naw sir, boss," Orange said he replied in the spur of the moment. "That's South Carolina Lutheran College."

Orange continued his activism on behalf of the poor and oppressed, Coretta Scott King pointed out in 1993, long after King was murdered, and long after the media spotlight had turned away from the movement.

"James' whole life has been committed to the struggle to liberate" people who suffer discrimination and injustice, she said in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article.

Over the years, Orange worked to organize labor for the AFL-CIO, heightened local awareness of racism in South Africa, and spoke out in support of Latino and African-American coalitions.

He organized an annual march in Atlanta to remember King. Orange had been in the parking lot outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis the night King was shot in 1968.

He was, associates said, a "giant," not just physically, but in his impact; rarely in the photo, but never out of the picture.

— Staff writer Christian Boone and Ernie Suggs contributed to this article.