| Summary: | Civil rights leader and minister Reverend C.T. Vivian was born in Howard County, Missouri in 1924. After growing up in Macomb, Illinois, and attending Western Illinois University, he took part in his first sit-ins in Peoria, Ill in 1947. In 1959, while attending seminary at American Baptist College in Nashville, Tenn., Vivian, with the Student Central Committee, approached Nashville Mayor Ben West and made him admit segregation was wrong. He was made a leader of the SCLC in the early 1960s, and in 1965 made national news when Selma Sheriff, Jim Clark, attacked him during a peaceful voter registration drive. Vivian also authored the first book on the modern Civil Rights Movement, Black Power and the American Myth, in 1969. He was the founder of BASIC, Black Action Strategies and Information Center, a workplace consultancy on race relations and multicultural training. In 1999, he turned over leadership of BASIC to one of his sons.
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