Gone but not Forgotten: The "Kingian" Legacies of Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette and Rev. Jesse Jackson

Gone but not Forgotten: The "Kingian" Legacies of Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette and Rev. Jesse Jackson

Join us for an overview of Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation on Wednesday, April 8th, 2026 at 6:00pm ET / 5:00pm CT / 3:00pm PT See it in your time zone

Kingian Nonviolence is an approach to conflict and community leadership that offers values and methods useful for anyone who wants to use conflict constructively in your personal life, in group settings, or in community issues and building a reconciled world. 

In this workshop we will be drawing on the stories and examples of two Civil Rights giants who recently passed in the last month: the Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr. was co-creator of the Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation curriculum and an early leader in the Southern Civil Rights Movement, where he launched voting rights organizing in Selma, Alabama. Later he developed and taught nonviolence internationally as well as in the US. Rev. Jesse Jackson was appointed by Dr. King to lead Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, later ran for President of the United States in 1984 and 1988, and established the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition, still operating and organizing in Chicago today.

Pam and Mary Lou will communicate the core tenets of the Kingian Nonviolence Legacy as exemplified in the lives of these two leaders and the other activists with whom they worked. Both Mary Lou and Pam worked with Rev. Dr. LaFayette and Rev. Jesse Jackson in different ways over the years.

This training will be co-facilitated by Pam Smith and Mary Lou Finley:

Pam Smith is a native Chicagoan, historian and genealogist living in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder and executive director of the Addie Wyatt Center for Nonviolence Training. A long-time consultant for nonprofit organizations, her team conducted the feasibility study that set the stage for the Chicago Freedom School, now in its 17th year. Pam served as a senior press aide to Rev. Jesse Jackson in his 1988 presidential bid and to Barack Obama in his primary campaign for the US Senate. She is coeditor of The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North and producer of the upcoming documentary called CURRENT: A Descendant's Journey for Truth.

Mary Lou Finley served on the staff of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Chicago Project in the mid-1960s.   She is a sociologist and Professor Emerita at Antioch University Seattle and has  a lifelong commitment to social justice, working over the years on  racial justice issues and poverty as well as environmental issues and more.    She is the co-author with Bill Moyer and two others of Doing Democracy:  The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements, and the co-editor (with Bernard LaFayette Jr., James Ralph and Pam Smith)  of The Chicago Freedom Movement:  Martin Luther King, Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North (2016). She is a certified Kingian Nonviolence trainer and a co-founder of the Addie Wyatt Center for Nonviolence Training- Chicago. 

Meet others interested in Kingian Nonviolence, build Beloved Community, and connect with On Earth Peace's Kingian Nonviolence Learning Action Community!

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