ATLANTA - The Rev. C.T. Vivian has died at the age of 95.
Vivian was an early ally of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who organized pivotal campaigns in the civil rights movement and then spent decades advocating for justice and equality.
He began staging sit-ins in the 1940s, a dozen years before lunch-counter protests made national news.
Vivian helped organize the Freedom Rides that compelled federal forces to protect buses across the South. Vivian boldly challenged a segregationist sheriff while trying to register Black voters in Selma, Alabama.
Thousands later marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge seeking voting rights.
