Bernard Lafayette Jr., the Distinguished Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Chair of the National Board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is sharing the 2014 Lillian Smith Book Award with his co-author Kathryn Lee Johnson for their book In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma (University of Kentucky Press, 2013). The book chronicles Lafayette’s efforts as director of the Alabama Voter Registration Project when he was one of the primary organizers of the 1965 Selma voting rights movement and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches.
The award is sponsored by the University of Georgia Libraries in partnership with the Southern Regional Council and the Georgia Center for the Book. The award is given to books that are “outstanding creative achievements, worthy of recognition because of their literary merit, moral vision, and honest representation of the South, its people, problems, and promises.”
Dr. Lafayette is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees in education from Harvard University.
