The Rev. James Orange, Civil Rights Leader and Union Activist, Dies at 65

by Mike Hall, Feb 18, 2008

The Rev. James E. Orange, who played a vital role in the birth and success of the modern civil rights movement and who later spent more than 30 years fighting for worker justice as an AFL-CIO organizer, died Feb. 16 in  Atlanta. He was 65.

Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

History rarely gives us leaders who are both revered and loved, honored and popular, inspiring and unwavering. Reverend James Orange was such a leader and was the living embodiment of the connection between the union movement and the civil rights movement. He never failed to stand when it counted, and the union movement deeply mourns his passing.

Orange was one of the first full-time field organizers hired by the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) to help mobilize young people in the early 1960s. He also played a pivotal part in the 1965 Selma, Ala., to Montgomery march that many say was the catalyst that lead to the passage and signing the Voting Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson in August 1965.

According the The Washington Post:

In 1965, as part of a voter registration drive, Rev. Orange was organizing a boycott in three southwest Alabama counties when he was arrested and jailed in Perry County. He had been charged with disorderly conduct and inciting students to participate in voting rights drives, as well as contributing to the delinquency of minors.

 

Residents in Marion, Ala., gathered for a march and prayer vigil at the jail for the young organizer with the baritone voice who was known for singing freedom songs.

 

“Rumors had gotten out that I was supposed to be lynched in jail,” Rev. Orange told the (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger last year. The protesters “didn’t get no more than out of the church, right in front of the courthouse and city hall, and they were brutally beaten.”

During that Feb. 18 march, Alabama State troopers shot one of the protesters, who died several days later. The shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson became a rallying point for the civil rights movement and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders organized the Selma to

When the marchers tried to enter Montgomery that March Sunday, they were met by baton-wielding police who severely beat the protestors and twice turned them back. A third attempt to cross the bridge into Montgomery was successful, but the television and newspaper images of the vicious beatings shocked many Americans and built support for the civil right movement and voting rights legislation.

Orange went on to become one of King’s top aides and followers of his principles of non-violence. His daughter Jamida told the Post:

You are not going to find anyone more committed to the legacy of Dr. King. He followed Dr. King’s philosophy to a T.

According to the Atlanta Constitution, Orange

held to the philosophy of nonviolence, reflecting peace with dignity.

 

To that end, he recalled, “I’d take a hit. I’d take a lick, a whupping—without retaliating. But I never, not once, went limp in a demonstration. I would walk to the truck, or they’d beat me to the truck, but I still wouldn’t go limp. I never would.”

In 1977, he joined the AFL-CIO—leading pickets and rallies, marches and protests, and organizing social justice efforts from the ground up. Workers in poultry plants, sewing factories and shipyards all marched with him toward justice. In fact, he was a fixture on organizing efforts in the South, playing a role in nearly every major effort by Southern working men and women to form a union or stand up for justice over the past several decades. Says Sweeney:

An Alabama sheriff in Marion once told a young James Orange in 1965, “Sing one more freedom song and you’re under arrest.” Five hundred students promptly followed Rev. Orange to jail, singing all the way. It is this incredible ability to inspire hope and courage in the face of fear which Rev. Orange brought to the union movement, leading working men and women to take on the boss, and to win a better life for themselves and their families time and time again.

 

The labor movement is simply a stronger movement because of Rev. Orange’s tremendous contributions, and we are determined to honor him by taking up his song for freedom without missing so much as a beat.

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