October 12, 2025
Douglas performed a pivotal position in planning a number of civil rights marches, together with the notorious Bloody Sunday March in Selma, Alabama.
Rev. Jesse L. Douglas, an in depth aide to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died in 2021 at age 90, although his passing has solely not too long ago come to mild. In response to his daughter, Adrienne Douglas Vaulx, he died in a nursing residence in Charlotte, North Carolina.
As The New York Occasions stories, Douglas’ loss of life was not extensively recognized on the time, and the outlet solely realized of it in the course of the week of Oct. 10. Douglas performed a pivotal position in planning a number of civil rights marches, together with two in Selma, Alabama — one in all which grew to become often called the notorious Bloody Sunday March. He labored intently with King as a part of the Montgomery Enchancment Affiliation, serving because the group’s president from 1963 to 1966.
That group, based in 1955 as a way to plan the response to the arrest of Rosa Parks for the “crime” of refusing to surrender her seat and transfer to the Black part of a Montgomery metropolis bus. The group helped promote a protracted citywide bus boycott, led by Dr. King, which ultimately resulted in a Supreme Court docket ruling that ended segregation of public transportation.
Douglas additionally sat on the nationwide board of the Southern Christian Management Convention for over 30 years, the SCLC was a gaggle devoted to civil rights which King started in 1957 and Douglas was properly revered in management circles for his capability to maintain a cool head whereas organizing voting rights marches which had been birthed in Selma.
In response to the Nationwide Park Service, the marches in Selma had been organized in response to the killing of Pupil Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) youth chief Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion, Alabama, by law enforcement officials.
There have been three marches in Selma, the primary, probably the most well-known of the three, Bloody Sunday, held on March 7, 1965, was ended after law enforcement officials brutally attacked protesters who tried to march throughout the Edmund Pettus Bridge after firing tear fuel canisters and ordering the gang to disperse.
The second, held two days later, was ended early by King, and the third, which efficiently achieved the objective of reaching the State Capitol in Montgomery, due partly to the accompaniment of 25,000 protestors by the Alabama Nationwide Guard, F.B.I. brokers and federal marshals, stretched throughout 4 days, lasting from March 21-25.
Douglas, an albino, was typically referred to in newspapers of the day as an “unidentified white man,” an ironic improvement, as a result of other than a scarcity of melanin, Black albino folks sometimes don’t share the identical facial options of white males.
Moreover, Douglas enrolled in HBCUs, first attending his hometown New Orleans’ college, Dillard College, earlier than ultimately transferring to Jackson, Tennessee’s Lane Faculty, which he graduated from in 1959.
Three years later, Douglas graduated from Atlanta’s Interdenominational Theological Middle, however earlier than his commencement, in 1960, he met King within the faculty’s library, and the assembly propelled him to get entangled within the civil rights motion. That very same yr, he joined a protest which aimed to desegregate the cafeteria of the Georgia State Capitol.
He performed an integral half within the protest, putting a name to the Southern Christian Management Council’s authorized affairs workplace, which led to a lawsuit and a ruling within the ensuing case, Douglas and Reynolds v. Vandenberg that desegregated all services on the Capitol constructing in Atlanta.
In an interview with the New York Occasions in 2018, he referred to himself as a reverse Oreo cookie, “white on the surface, Black on the within.”
The late Rep. John Lewis, who can also be featured in arguably some of the well-known pictures of the civil rights period alongside King and Douglas, famous in a 2015 interview with The Charlotte Observer that King had an excessive amount of belief in Douglas’ capability to coordinate the wants of the motion’s logistics.
“Dr. King had an excessive amount of religion in him,” Lewis mentioned. “He would say, ‘Jesse was caring for this’ and ‘Jesse was caring for that.’ And he may lead a track, creating an actual sense of solidarity.”
His singing even earned him excessive reward. Charles Steele Jr., a longtime president and chief government of the SCLC, indicated that he typically served the identical position as Mahalia Jackson, one other King confidant who typically set the desk for his sermons in Black church buildings.
“He actually set the church on hearth and obtained folks motivated, just about like Mahalia Jackson,” Steele recalled.
He continued, noting, just like the late Rep. Lewis, that the position Douglas occupied was an important one. “He had a lovely character, was very outgoing, and everybody knew that if Dr. King or the nationwide workplace wanted one thing, he would do it. You wanted folks like that — a part of the internal circle, however somebody prepared to do no matter was wanted to assist the motion.”
Nevertheless, as Douglas informed the New York Occasions, typically his pale pores and skin was a Catch 22.
“They (white segregationists) at all times thought of me a sympathizer with Black folks, however not one in all them. You realize, that’s how I grew to become ‘unidentified white man.’ They didn’t wish to arouse friction from their very own variety for killing one other white man.”
He continued, “I had Black folks make enjoyable of me, name me ‘previous white boy,’ ‘previous albino.’ I by no means paid it any consideration. I mentioned, ‘In the event that they’re dissatisfied with the best way I look, go see God.’”
Douglas was preceded in loss of life by his longtime spouse, Blanche Gordon, in 2015. Along with his daughter, he’s additionally survived by two sons, Winston and Jesse Jr.; a brother, Collins; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
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