Dr. Bernard LaFayette was an American civil rights activist, organizer, and Baptist minister who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He played a leading role in the early stages of the Selma Voting Rights Movement and was a member of the Nashville Student Movement. He was the co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the co-author of the Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Resolution training philosophy, and author of his personal memoir, In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma.

Professor Kasumagić-Kafedžić first met Dr. Lafayette when Professor Paul Bueno De Mesqitta invited her on behalf of the University of Rhode Island and their Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies to attend the International Nonviolence Summer Institute (June 6-17, 2011) at their University and study the Kingian Philosophy of Nonviolence after the work and legacy of Martin Luther King.

Dr. La Fayette was the first director of the University of Rhode Island’s Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies from 1999 to 2009, where he also served as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar, returning to various seminars, trainings, and institutes.  Dr. La Fayette carried history in all his stories and teachings as he lived through the brutality and historical transformation in the US, which deeply reshaped the realities of the American nation at the time. He was one of the teachers in the International Nonviolence Summer Institutes, and his teachings deeply shaped the pedagogy and the learning of all international students and participants.

Our Peace Hub hosted a webinar with Dr. LaFayette in 2021 (Webinar on Pedagogy for Peace and Nonviolence) when we discussed the Pedagogy for Peace and Nonviolence, and shared our insights and perspectives in bringing nonviolence and peace closer to our schools, our communites our, and teacher education programs.

Dr. LaFayette passed away on March 6, 2026, in his home in Alabama, at the age of 85.

His spirit to remain hopeful, his strength to carry on the decades of struggle, his dedication to institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence and peace, and his unique way of telling stories will always be remembered and honored in education for peace as an exemplary and passionate life and nonviolence legacy.

We are grateful and honored to have known him, and we will always remember him as one of our peace and nonviolence teachers and mentors.