Lowery, Joseph E.

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Lowery, Joseph E.

October 6, 1924

Born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, Joseph Echols Lowery, who served as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), attended Knoxville College in Tennessee from 1939 to 1941. In the 1940s he studied theology at Paine Theological Seminary in Augusta, Georgia, and was ordained a minister by the United Methodist Church. From 1952 to 1961 he served as pastor of the Warren Street Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama, where he developed a politically active ministry and helped sponsor lower- and middle-class housing developments for African Americans. In January 1957 Lowery was invited by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth to become a founding member of the SCLC.

Lowery remained one of the SCLC's central leaders through the heyday of the civil rights movement. He first gained national attention, however, in 1962 when the city commissioners of Montgomery, Alabama, successfully sued Lowery, three other SCLC leaders, and the New York Times for libel over the organization's advertisement in the newspaper attacking the racist policies of the Montgomery city government. The case, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), became a landmark in libel jurisprudence when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Alabama court's decision in favor of the plaintiffs. Lowery served as a chief organizer of the pivotal desegregation campaigns in Birmingham in 1963 and Selma in 1965. In 1965 he moved to Birmingham to become pastor of St. Paul's Methodist Church and assumed a leadership position in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, a civil rights organization allied with the SCLC.

In 1968 Lowery moved to Atlanta, where he became pastor of Central United Methodist Church and emerged as the leader of the moderate faction within the SCLC. In 1977 he wrested control from the militant wing, led by Hosea Williams, and was elected president of the organization in 1977. As president he was accused by the Williams faction of transforming the SCLC into a "middle-class clique of blacks," yet under Lowery's leadership the organization underwent a period of revitalized activism.

In 1978 and 1979 Lowery led a protest of a Mississippi energy company for buying coal from South Africa and directed a support march for the "Wilmington Ten," a group of civil rights activists who had been jailed for alleged conspiracy to murder white segregationists. During this time the SCLC also led a support march for Tommie Lee Hines, a mentally retarded black youth who the organization believed was wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Decatur, Alabama. During the march for Hines, members of the Ku Klux Klan opened fire on the marchers, injuring four and barely missing Lowery and his wife. In 1979 Lowery was severely criticized by American Jewish organizations after he led a delegation of African-American clergy to Lebanon, where they met with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasir Arafat and called for the establishment of a Palestinian homeland, reduction of U.S. aid to Israel, and PLO recognition of Israel as a nation.

In the 1980s Lowery continued to broaden the SCLC's activities beyond traditional civil rights issues. He oversaw the organization's involvement with Haitian refugees seeking political asylum in the United States, protested U.S. policy in Central America, supported the antiapartheid movement, and reinitiated the Operation Breadbasket economic program, which raised money for black-owned enterprises. Through the decade the group also conducted Crusade for the Ballot, a program that significantly increased the black vote in the South through increased voter registrations. In 1986 Lowery transferred to the Cascade United Methodist Church, where he finished his career as a minister.

In the early 1990s the SCLC under Lowery's leadership continued to serve as a national coordinating agency for local civil rights organizations and conducted a national "Stop the Killing" campaign to protest gang violence. Lowery retired from the ministry in 1992 but nevertheless continued to serve as president of the SCLC until his retirement in July 1997. He remained active in community affairs, notably as a member of the board of MARTA, Atlanta's transit system.

Lowery has been the recipient of numerous honors. He was named one of the nation's greatest black preachers by Ebony magazine, and the Joseph E. Lowery Institute for Justice and Human Rights was established at Clark Atlanta University.

Bibliography

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

Current Biography Yearbook. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1982.

Fairclough, Adam. To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.

thaddeus russell (1996)
Updated by publisher 2005

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History