The Rev. James L. Bevel, an adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose influence spurred a pivotal event of the civil rights movement, the "children's crusade" in Birmingham, Ala., but whose reputation was later marred by fringe political associations and a criminal conviction this year on incest charges involving a teenage daughter, died Friday in Springfield, Va. He was 72.
Another daughter, Sherilynn Bevel, confirmed the death, The Washington Post reported. Mr. Bevel had been released from prison in November because he had pancreatic cancer.
Charismatic and eloquently quick-witted in a vernacular style, Mr. Bevel was known as a man of passion and peculiarity. He often wore overalls over a shirt and tie; he shaved his head and sometimes covered it with a yarmulke in honor of Old Testament prophets.
"A wild man from Itta Bena, Mississippi," Taylor Branch called him in "Parting the Waters," the first volume of his history of the civil rights movement, "a self-described example of the legendary ‘chicken-eating, liquor-drinking, woman-chasing Baptist preacher.' "
Nonetheless, Dr. King relied on his counsel. A loud opponent of American involvement in Vietnam, which he viewed as an extension of white oppression of nonwhites, Mr. Bevel was instrumental in Dr. King's increasingly vocal opposition to the war.
In 1963, as the Alabama project director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization led by Dr. King, Mr. Bevel persuaded Dr. King to allow children to participate in antisegregation demonstrations, in which they would almost surely face arrest. Though initially reluctant, Dr. King finally agreed.
The demonstrations, early that year, overwhelmed the city, and the news coverage, complete with televised images of black children being arrested or soaked and bowled over by law enforcement officers wielding powerful fire hoses, helped rally much of the American public to the side of the civil rights movement.
In March 1965, Mr. Bevel, a fiery orator, spoke at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Ala., the starting point of a symbolic march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where demonstrators had been beaten two days earlier — a day remembered as "Bloody Sunday" — in a first attempt to march to Montgomery to protest discriminatory voting practices. (The completed march, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, took place two weeks later.)
James Luther Bevel, one of 17 children, was born on Oct 19, 1936, in Itta Bena, in central Mississippi, and divided his childhood between there and Cleveland, where he worked in the steel mills as a teenager. He appeared headed for a career as a pop music singer — he had signed a contract with a record label — when he felt called to the ministry and enrolled in the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, where he joined the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In 1968, Mr. Bevel was at the Memphis motel where Dr. King was assassinated, and in a bizarre post-mortem, he claimed that the man who was arrested for (and later convicted of) the shooting, James Earl Ray, was not the killer and that he had evidence — which he declined to reveal — that Mr. Ray was innocent.
Though not a lawyer, Mr. Bevel offered to represent Mr. Ray in court. This was followed by a number of erratic-seeming episodes in his life. John Lewis, another King confidant who has been a Georgia congressman for more than 20 years, recalled in a memoir that at Spelman College in Atlanta, Mr. Bevel once declared himself a prophet and made his student disciples drink urine to signal their loyalty.
Politically Mr. Bevel drifted to the right, supporting Ronald Reagan's presidency and tying himself to Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., the perpetual fringe candidate for president. Mr. Bevel was Mr. LaRouche's running mate in 1992, a time when Mr. LaRouche was serving time for fraud and tax evasion.
He was buried in a 17-foot canoe in a small country cemetery in Eutaw, Alabama. James Bevel was married four times and had 16 children.
Another daughter, Sherilynn Bevel, confirmed the death, The Washington Post reported. Mr. Bevel had been released from prison in November because he had pancreatic cancer.
Charismatic and eloquently quick-witted in a vernacular style, Mr. Bevel was known as a man of passion and peculiarity. He often wore overalls over a shirt and tie; he shaved his head and sometimes covered it with a yarmulke in honor of Old Testament prophets.
"A wild man from Itta Bena, Mississippi," Taylor Branch called him in "Parting the Waters," the first volume of his history of the civil rights movement, "a self-described example of the legendary ‘chicken-eating, liquor-drinking, woman-chasing Baptist preacher.' "
Nonetheless, Dr. King relied on his counsel. A loud opponent of American involvement in Vietnam, which he viewed as an extension of white oppression of nonwhites, Mr. Bevel was instrumental in Dr. King's increasingly vocal opposition to the war.
In 1963, as the Alabama project director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization led by Dr. King, Mr. Bevel persuaded Dr. King to allow children to participate in antisegregation demonstrations, in which they would almost surely face arrest. Though initially reluctant, Dr. King finally agreed.
The demonstrations, early that year, overwhelmed the city, and the news coverage, complete with televised images of black children being arrested or soaked and bowled over by law enforcement officers wielding powerful fire hoses, helped rally much of the American public to the side of the civil rights movement.
In March 1965, Mr. Bevel, a fiery orator, spoke at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Ala., the starting point of a symbolic march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where demonstrators had been beaten two days earlier — a day remembered as "Bloody Sunday" — in a first attempt to march to Montgomery to protest discriminatory voting practices. (The completed march, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, took place two weeks later.)
James Luther Bevel, one of 17 children, was born on Oct 19, 1936, in Itta Bena, in central Mississippi, and divided his childhood between there and Cleveland, where he worked in the steel mills as a teenager. He appeared headed for a career as a pop music singer — he had signed a contract with a record label — when he felt called to the ministry and enrolled in the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, where he joined the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In 1968, Mr. Bevel was at the Memphis motel where Dr. King was assassinated, and in a bizarre post-mortem, he claimed that the man who was arrested for (and later convicted of) the shooting, James Earl Ray, was not the killer and that he had evidence — which he declined to reveal — that Mr. Ray was innocent.
Though not a lawyer, Mr. Bevel offered to represent Mr. Ray in court. This was followed by a number of erratic-seeming episodes in his life. John Lewis, another King confidant who has been a Georgia congressman for more than 20 years, recalled in a memoir that at Spelman College in Atlanta, Mr. Bevel once declared himself a prophet and made his student disciples drink urine to signal their loyalty.
Politically Mr. Bevel drifted to the right, supporting Ronald Reagan's presidency and tying himself to Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., the perpetual fringe candidate for president. Mr. Bevel was Mr. LaRouche's running mate in 1992, a time when Mr. LaRouche was serving time for fraud and tax evasion.
He was buried in a 17-foot canoe in a small country cemetery in Eutaw, Alabama. James Bevel was married four times and had 16 children.
The Rev. James L. Bevel, an adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose influence spurred a pivotal event of the civil rights movement, the "children's crusade" in Birmingham, Ala., but whose reputation was later marred by fringe political associations and a criminal conviction this year on incest charges involving a teenage daughter, died Friday in Springfield, Va. He was 72.
Another daughter, Sherilynn Bevel, confirmed the death, The Washington Post reported. Mr. Bevel had been released from prison in November because he had pancreatic cancer.
Charismatic and eloquently quick-witted in a vernacular style, Mr. Bevel was known as a man of passion and peculiarity. He often wore overalls over a shirt and tie; he shaved his head and sometimes covered it with a yarmulke in honor of Old Testament prophets.
"A wild man from Itta Bena, Mississippi," Taylor Branch called him in "Parting the Waters," the first volume of his history of the civil rights movement, "a self-described example of the legendary ‘chicken-eating, liquor-drinking, woman-chasing Baptist preacher.' "
Nonetheless, Dr. King relied on his counsel. A loud opponent of American involvement in Vietnam, which he viewed as an extension of white oppression of nonwhites, Mr. Bevel was instrumental in Dr. King's increasingly vocal opposition to the war.
In 1963, as the Alabama project director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization led by Dr. King, Mr. Bevel persuaded Dr. King to allow children to participate in antisegregation demonstrations, in which they would almost surely face arrest. Though initially reluctant, Dr. King finally agreed.
The demonstrations, early that year, overwhelmed the city, and the news coverage, complete with televised images of black children being arrested or soaked and bowled over by law enforcement officers wielding powerful fire hoses, helped rally much of the American public to the side of the civil rights movement.
In March 1965, Mr. Bevel, a fiery orator, spoke at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Ala., the starting point of a symbolic march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where demonstrators had been beaten two days earlier — a day remembered as "Bloody Sunday" — in a first attempt to march to Montgomery to protest discriminatory voting practices. (The completed march, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, took place two weeks later.)
James Luther Bevel, one of 17 children, was born on Oct 19, 1936, in Itta Bena, in central Mississippi, and divided his childhood between there and Cleveland, where he worked in the steel mills as a teenager. He appeared headed for a career as a pop music singer — he had signed a contract with a record label — when he felt called to the ministry and enrolled in the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, where he joined the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In 1968, Mr. Bevel was at the Memphis motel where Dr. King was assassinated, and in a bizarre post-mortem, he claimed that the man who was arrested for (and later convicted of) the shooting, James Earl Ray, was not the killer and that he had evidence — which he declined to reveal — that Mr. Ray was innocent.
Though not a lawyer, Mr. Bevel offered to represent Mr. Ray in court. This was followed by a number of erratic-seeming episodes in his life. John Lewis, another King confidant who has been a Georgia congressman for more than 20 years, recalled in a memoir that at Spelman College in Atlanta, Mr. Bevel once declared himself a prophet and made his student disciples drink urine to signal their loyalty.
Politically Mr. Bevel drifted to the right, supporting Ronald Reagan's presidency and tying himself to Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., the perpetual fringe candidate for president. Mr. Bevel was Mr. LaRouche's running mate in 1992, a time when Mr. LaRouche was serving time for fraud and tax evasion.
He was buried in a 17-foot canoe in a small country cemetery in Eutaw, Alabama. James Bevel was married four times and had 16 children.
Another daughter, Sherilynn Bevel, confirmed the death, The Washington Post reported. Mr. Bevel had been released from prison in November because he had pancreatic cancer.
Charismatic and eloquently quick-witted in a vernacular style, Mr. Bevel was known as a man of passion and peculiarity. He often wore overalls over a shirt and tie; he shaved his head and sometimes covered it with a yarmulke in honor of Old Testament prophets.
"A wild man from Itta Bena, Mississippi," Taylor Branch called him in "Parting the Waters," the first volume of his history of the civil rights movement, "a self-described example of the legendary ‘chicken-eating, liquor-drinking, woman-chasing Baptist preacher.' "
Nonetheless, Dr. King relied on his counsel. A loud opponent of American involvement in Vietnam, which he viewed as an extension of white oppression of nonwhites, Mr. Bevel was instrumental in Dr. King's increasingly vocal opposition to the war.
In 1963, as the Alabama project director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization led by Dr. King, Mr. Bevel persuaded Dr. King to allow children to participate in antisegregation demonstrations, in which they would almost surely face arrest. Though initially reluctant, Dr. King finally agreed.
The demonstrations, early that year, overwhelmed the city, and the news coverage, complete with televised images of black children being arrested or soaked and bowled over by law enforcement officers wielding powerful fire hoses, helped rally much of the American public to the side of the civil rights movement.
In March 1965, Mr. Bevel, a fiery orator, spoke at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Ala., the starting point of a symbolic march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where demonstrators had been beaten two days earlier — a day remembered as "Bloody Sunday" — in a first attempt to march to Montgomery to protest discriminatory voting practices. (The completed march, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, took place two weeks later.)
James Luther Bevel, one of 17 children, was born on Oct 19, 1936, in Itta Bena, in central Mississippi, and divided his childhood between there and Cleveland, where he worked in the steel mills as a teenager. He appeared headed for a career as a pop music singer — he had signed a contract with a record label — when he felt called to the ministry and enrolled in the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, where he joined the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In 1968, Mr. Bevel was at the Memphis motel where Dr. King was assassinated, and in a bizarre post-mortem, he claimed that the man who was arrested for (and later convicted of) the shooting, James Earl Ray, was not the killer and that he had evidence — which he declined to reveal — that Mr. Ray was innocent.
Though not a lawyer, Mr. Bevel offered to represent Mr. Ray in court. This was followed by a number of erratic-seeming episodes in his life. John Lewis, another King confidant who has been a Georgia congressman for more than 20 years, recalled in a memoir that at Spelman College in Atlanta, Mr. Bevel once declared himself a prophet and made his student disciples drink urine to signal their loyalty.
Politically Mr. Bevel drifted to the right, supporting Ronald Reagan's presidency and tying himself to Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., the perpetual fringe candidate for president. Mr. Bevel was Mr. LaRouche's running mate in 1992, a time when Mr. LaRouche was serving time for fraud and tax evasion.
He was buried in a 17-foot canoe in a small country cemetery in Eutaw, Alabama. James Bevel was married four times and had 16 children.
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