From the AJC:
The event featured civil rights icons as well as Aretha Franklin.
She was the highlight of a night that featured dancing, music and plays focusing on Reverend Lowery's life.
The $50-a-head ticket went to support the Joseph E. Lowery Institute for Justice and Human Rights.
Mildred Drayton says Dr. Lowery is an inspiration to youth today.
A little bit of bio:
Lowery was pastor of the Warren Street United Methodist Church, in Mobile, Alabama from 1952 until 1961.
His career in the civil rights movement began in the early 1950s in Mobile, Alabama.
After Rosa Parks' arrest in 1955, Lowery helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. He headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, an organization devoted to the desegregation of buses and public places.
In 1957, with Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and subsequently led the organization as its president from 1977 to 1997.
Best quote:
Speaking at Coretta Scott King's funeral,
"We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor!"
Honor the elders before their gone.
