ATLANTA -- The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery fought to end segregation, lived to see the election of the country's first black president and echoed the call for "justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream" in America. Lowery, 98, died Friday at home in Atlanta while surrounded by family members, they said in a statement.
He died from natural causes unrelated to the coronavirus outbreak, the statement said.
For more than four decades after the death of his friend and fellow civil-rights icon, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Lowery was on the front line of the battle for equality, with an unforgettable delivery that rivaled King's -- and was often more unpredictable. The Alabama preacher had a knack for cutting to the core of the country's conscience with commentary steeped in Scripture, refusing to back down whether the audience was a Jim Crow law supporter or a U.S. president.
"We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back; when brown can stick around; when yellow will be mellow; when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right," Lowery prayed at President Barack Obama's inaugural benediction in 2009.
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"Tonight, the great Reverend Joseph E. Lowery transitioned from earth to eternity," The King Center in Atlanta said of Lowery in a Friday night tweet. "He was a champion for civil rights, a challenger of injustice, a dear friend to the King family."
Lowery led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for two decades -- restoring the organization's financial stability and pressuring businesses not to trade with South Africa's apartheid-era regime -- before retiring in 1997.
Considered the dean of civil-rights veterans, he lived to celebrate a November 2008 milestone that few of his movement colleagues thought they would ever witness -- the election of a black president.
At an emotional victory celebration for then-President-elect Obama in Atlanta, Lowery said, "America tonight is in the process of being born again." Lowery was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Obama over then-Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
In 2009, Obama awarded Lowery the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
In a statement Saturday, Obama said Lowery "changed the face of America."
"He carried the baton longer and surer than almost anybody. It falls to the rest of us now to pick it up and never stop moving forward until we finish what he started -- that journey to justice," he said.
Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, were grateful for Lowery's "personal and spiritual support he offered us from the early days of our campaign ... and for the friendship and counsel he provided ever since."
In another high-profile moment, Lowery drew a standing ovation at the 2006 funeral of King's widow, Coretta Scott King, when he criticized the war in Iraq, saying, "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."
Lowery's involvement in civil rights grew out of his Christian faith. He often preached that racial discrimination in housing, employment and health care was at odds with such fundamental Christian values as human worth and the brotherhood of man.
"I've never felt your ministry should be totally devoted to making a heavenly home. I thought it should also be devoted to making your home here heavenly," he once said.
Lowery remained active in fighting issues such as war, poverty and racism long after retirement, and he survived prostate cancer and throat surgery after he beat Jim Crow.
"We have lost a stalwart of the Civil Rights Movement, and I have lost a friend and mentor," U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said in a statement Saturday. "His wit and candor inspired my generation to use civil disobedience to move the needle on 'liberty and justice for all.' It was his life's work and his was a life well lived."
Former President Bill Clinton remembered walking with Lowery across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on the 35th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
"Our country has lost a brave, visionary leader in the struggle for justice and a champion of its promise, still unrealized, of equality for all Americans," Clinton said. "Throughout his long good life, Joe Lowery's commitment to speaking truth to power never wavered, even in the hottest fires."
His wife, Evelyn Gibson Lowery, who worked alongside her husband of nearly 70 years and served as head of SCLC/WOMEN, died in 2013.
"I'll miss you, Uncle Joe. You finally made it up to see Aunt Evelyn again," King's daughter, Bernice King, said in a tweet Friday night.
A Section on 03/29/2020