Joseph E Lowery

The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a lieutenant to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who helped organize a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement — the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala. — and who gave the benediction at President Barack Obama’s inauguration more than half a century later, died on Friday March 27 2020 at his home in Atlanta. He was 98. An ordained Methodist minister, Lowery became involved in the early days of the civil rights movement. He helped lead the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March and worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and others to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He continued to serve the organization, retiring as president and CEO in 1998. Joseph Echols Lowery was born on Oct. 6, 1921, in Huntsville, Ala., where his father owned a pool hall and other properties. His family sent him to Chicago to live with relatives, but he returned to Huntsville to finish high school. He attended several colleges, including Paine College in Augusta, Ga., where he studied sociology. He then worked for a black newspaper in Birmingham, Ala., where he reported on racist violence. In Birmingham he met Evelyn Gibson, a minister’s daughter, whom he married in 1947. In 1979, she founded the nonprofit group S.C.L.C./WOMEN (for Women’s Organizational Movement for Equality Now), which advocates for disadvantaged women, children and families. She died in 2013. Mr. Lowery’s survivors include three daughters.