Cordy Tindell Vivian was a roaring lion of the civil rights movement.  Born in July of 1924, he died last July right before his 96th birthday.  Given all the dangerous things he did in his life, it’s amazing that he outlived his adversaries as well as most of his friends.

 

One of those friends helped him write this memoir, as his ability to do so declined with age.  Steve Fiffer met Vivian in 2014, when he interviewed him for another book.  CT — as his friends called him — was one of his heroes.  They stayed in touch, occasionally discussing a collaborative memoir.  It was CT’s daughter who persuaded Fiffer to do it now.  Consequently this book is made up of excerpts from many interviews Vivian did over the years with Fiffer and others, as well as his own words, mostly written in earlier times.

 

Born in Missouri, CT grew up in western Illinois, making him one of the few northerners to become a leader in the Southern civil rights movement.  His first sit-in was with CORE in Peoria, IL in 1947, long before the civil rights movement got off the ground.  In his Illinois public schools he experienced the perils of integration while NAACP Inc. Fund lawyers were trying to get the Court to declare segregation unconstitutional.

 

Vivian moved to Nashville to attend seminary in 1955.  By that time he had married twice and his third child (of six) was on the way.  In Nashville he became a devotee of Rev. Jim Lawson, whose workshops in non-violence trained a generation of civil rights activists.  Lawson was the real father of the civil rights movement, or at least its dedication to non-violent resistance.

 

Throughout the book, Vivian tells stores of the actions he participated in, starting with the Nashville Student Movement (1960).  He was a 1961 Freedom Rider who served time in Parchman (Mississippi State Penitentiary).  He worked in the Albany Movement (1961) and in Birmingham (1963), in St. Augustine (1964) and Selma (1965).  In 1962 he was recruited by Dr. Martin Luther King to become SCLC’s director of national affiliates.  In 1966 he left SCLC to join the Urban Training Center for Christian Mission in Chicago.  After a few years he moved to Atlanta to start another organization, one of many he would start over the years.

 

CT had many mentors, starting with his grandmother.  The pastor of his Peoria church raised money from the congregation for him to go to seminary.  Heads of organizations (e.g. SCLC, UTC) invited him to join their organizations at top levels; he didn’t have to work his way up.  He acknowledges that his most important supporter was his wife Octavia, who always encouraged him to do what he wanted to do and go where he needed to go.  He credits her with being an author in her own right as well as a major influence on him and the one who raised their children.

 

The majority of the book is about his years in the civil rights movement.  He describes many of the people in it as well as some of his adversaries.  Vivian lived a long life after the movement ended in which he continued to be active in different ways. 

 

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