James Orange dies - Veteran civil rights activist arrested more than 100 times in freedom struggle

Veteran civil rights campaigner, the Rev. James Orange, who has died aged 65, was one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's staunchest and most courageous lieutenants, and played a crucial role in the emergence of the movement in the southern states in the early 1960s. He was believed to have been arrested more than 100 times on demonstrations, and was indirectly responsible for the federal intervention that led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. A full-time worker with King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference since his teens, Orange was in charge of civil rights actions in Marion, Alabama, in 1965. He was arrested and imprisoned, and there were fears that he would be lynched. These rumors led to a demonstration in which a young man named Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered by an Alabama state trooper. Jackson's death led directly to the decision, taken in Orange's presence, to stage the famous Selma-to-Montgomery march, which attracted international attention because of the violence shown towards the demonstrators by Alabama state troopers. The outrage prompted President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act, which extended the franchise to all black adults. Earlier, in 1963, Orange had joined the so-called "children's crusade" protest in Birmingham, Alabama, where the willingness of civil rights demonstrators to brave police dogs and water cannon turned what might have been a defeat for King's movement into a resounding victory. Later, he was active in King's effort to end housing segregation in Chicago, holding classes in non-violence for a notorious West Side Chicago gang, the Blackstone Rangers. Early in 1968, he was among the leaders of the "poor people's campaign," when black sharecroppers with mule carts and poor white people from the Appalachian mountains camped in front of the Capitol building in Washington. Orange went to Memphis with King in the spring of 1968 to support the sanitation workers' strike. One of his tasks was to deal with the Invaders, a youth gang intent on squeezing protection money from the civil rights movement, and he was present when King was murdered on the balcony of the Lorraine motel on Apr. 4. Shattered by King's death, Orange moved to Atlanta, where, in 1970, he became a regional coordinator with the AFL-CIO trade union. In 1977, he won union recognition for workers at the textile firm JP Stevens, and is said to have worked on more than 300 labor disputes. "We've made 'solidarity' our way of life," he told an interviewer, "not only within the labor movement but between the labor movement and the African-American community." Orange was a convert to non-violence and endured nine severe beatings rather than respond with violence. He was a large man, 6ft 3in and well over 20 stone. He had a strong baritone voice, both for preaching and hymn-singing -- an altogether formidable presence. Once, when he was in Chicago, a fight broke out between the Blackstone Rangers and another gang, the Cobras. Orange tried to break it up and got a broken nose for his trouble. Born in Birmingham, Orange was the son of a steelworker and union organizer. His mother was a civil rights campaigner. He had been drifting around for a year after leaving high school, working as a chef, when King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference came to town for a recruitment drive. Orange arrived late at a church meeting, to which, on his own admission, he had been drawn by a pretty girlfriend. Only afterwards did he realize that the seat he had sat down in was among those reserved for volunteers facing arrest. He went to work for Jim Bevel, one of the roughest and the most eloquent of King's lieutenants, and it was Bevel who led him to Marion, in the Alabama black belt. After the shooting of Jimmie Jackson, Bevel and Orange were discussing the possibility of a motorcade from Selma to Montgomery to confront the state's segregationist governor, George Wallace, when a local woman, Lucy Foster, suggested a march instead. The first march ended in violence. A second attempt was halted by King, possibly as a result of a secret agreement with President Johnson's emissaries. Only after the liberal federal judge Frank Johnson gave permission did the demonstrators march to Montgomery. Orange also worked in Danville, Virginia, St. Augustine, Florida, in Chicago, Philadelphia and the Hough ghetto in Cleveland. In 2006 he championed the cause of Cynthia McKinney, the former congresswoman who filed impeachment proceedings against President Bush over the Iraq War. In later years, his health declined and in 2002 he had a triple heart bypass operation. He is survived by Cleophas, known as Cleo, his wife of 39 years, daughters Jamida, Deirdre and Tamara, and son Cleon. Another daughter, Pamela, died last year. · James Edward Orange, clergyman and civil rights campaigner, born Oct. 29, 1942; died Feb. 16, 2008