Lonnie King

The Life and Legacy

Lonnie King Jr.’s name is practically unheard-of outside Atlanta. He is part of a growing list of twentieth-century activists whose efforts were crucial to the gains of the Civil Rights Movement but are quickly becoming forgotten as time passes. As new threats to our civil liberties rise every day, it’s critical to realize that remembering Lonnie King means remembering that the successes of the Civil Rights Movement were not the result of a single broad campaign in the 1960s. These successes were, in fact, brought about through incredibly well-coordinated acts by regular people—like busy undergraduates—who made strategic sacrifices to try and bring about often exceedingly slow social change.  

“Because we’ve got to save our people, we’ve got to find a way to merge the wisdom of people like me with the enthusiasm of young people to form a team that can do the hard work.” 

– Lonnie King during a panel on the 1963 March on Washington, Morehouse College, 2013 

King’s activism and focus on education later in life reminds us that we must protect our victories, which are being stripped away again. And his commemoration efforts later in life demonstrate how physically memorializing the places of progress, especially as the face of the city changes, keeps us in dialogue with the decisions these very brave, very young people made decades ago.