This member of the group that was the subject of the 1970 book "Black Power and the American Myth" died on December 19, 2008.
James Bevel James Luther Bevel (October 19, 1936 – December 19, 2008) was a minister and leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As the Director of Direct Action and of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma voting rights movement, and the 1966 Chicago open housing movement. He suggested that SCLC call for and join a March on Washington in 1963. Bevel later strategized the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, which contributed to Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
E. D. Nixon Edgar Daniel Nixon (July 12, 1899 – February 25, 1987), known as E. D. Nixon, was an African-American civil rights leader and union organizer in Alabama who played a crucial role in organizing the landmark Montgomery Bus Boycott there in 1955. The boycott highlighted the issues of segregation in the South, was upheld for more than a year by black residents, and nearly brought the city-owned bus system to bankruptcy. It ended in December 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled in the related case, "Browder v. Gayle" (1956), that the local and state laws were unconstitutional, and ordered the state to end bus segregation.