The charismatic preacher who fought against racial discrimination died at home in Atlanta from natural causes.

Joseph E Lowery, a veteran civil rights leader who helped Martin Luther King Jr found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and fought against racial discrimination in the United States, has died, a family statement has said.

A family statement said he died on Friday at home in Atlanta from natural causes unrelated to the coronavirus pandemic. He was 98.

A charismatic and fiery preacher, Lowery led the SCLC for two decades – restoring the organisation’s financial stability and pressuring businesses not to trade with South Africa‘s apartheid-era regime – before retiring in 1997.

Lowery, considered the dean of civil rights veterans, lived to celebrate a November 2008 milestone that few of his movement colleagues thought they would ever witness – the election of an African American president.

At an emotional victory celebration for President-elect Barack Obama in Atlanta, Lowery said, “America tonight is in the process of being born again.”

An early and enthusiastic supporter of Obama over then-Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, Lowery also gave the benediction at Obama’s inauguration.

“We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that, yes, we can work together to achieve a more perfect union,” he said.

In 2009, Obama awarded Lowery the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honour.

In another high-profile moment, Lowery drew a standing ovation at the 2006 funeral of King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, when he criticised the war in Iraq, saying, “For war, billions more, but no more for the poor.”

The comment also drew head shakes from then-President George Bush and his father, former president George H W Bush, who were seated behind the pulpit.

Joseph Lowery waves after his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington during 50th anniversary ceremonies of the 1963 March on Washington [File: Gary Cameron/Reuters]

Christian faith

Lowery’s involvement in civil rights grew from his Christian faith. He often preached that racial discrimination in housing, employment and health care was at odds with fundamental Christian values such as human worth and the brotherhood of man.

“I’ve never felt your ministry should be totally devoted to making a heavenly home. I thought it should also be devoted to making your home here heavenly,” he once said.

Lowery remained active in fighting issues such as war, poverty and racism long after retiring, and survived prostate cancer and throat surgery after he beat the racial segregation system known as Jim Crow.

His wife, Evelyn Gibson Lowery, who worked alongside her husband of nearly 70 years and served as head of SCLC Women, died in 2013.

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Lowery was pastor of the Warren Street Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama, in the 1950s when he met King, who then lived in Montgomery, Alabama.

Lowery’s meetings with King, Ralph David Abernathy and other civil rights activists led to the SCLC’s formation in 1957. The group became a leading force in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.

Lowery became SCLC president in 1977 following the resignation of Abernathy, who had taken the job after King was assassinated in 1968.

He took over an SCLC that was deeply in debt and losing members rapidly. Lowery helped the organisation survive and guided it on a new course that embraced more mainstream social and economic policies.

Coretta Scott King once said Lowery “has led more marches and been in the trenches more than anyone since Martin”.

Protests and boycotts

He was arrested in 1983 in North Carolina for protesting against the dumping of toxic wastes in a predominantly black county and in 1984 in Washington while demonstrating against apartheid.

He recalled a 1979 confrontation in Decatur, Alabama, when he and others were protesting against the case of a mentally disabled black man charged with rape. He recalled that bullets whizzed inches above their heads and a group of Klan members confronted them.

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“I could hear them go ‘whoosh’,” Lowery said. “I’ll never forget that. I almost died 24 miles from where I was born.”

In the mid-1980s, he led a boycott that persuaded the Winn-Dixie grocery chain to stop selling South African canned fruit and frozen fish when that nation was in the grip of apartheid.

He also continued to urge black people to exercise their hard-won rights by registering to vote.

“Black people need to understand that the right to vote was not a gift of our political system but came as a result of blood, sweat and tears,” he said in 1985.

Like King, Lowery combined his civil rights work with ministry. He pastored United Methodist churches in Atlanta for decades and continued preaching long after retiring.

‘I believe in the final triumph of righteousness’

Born in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1921, Joseph Echols Lowery grew up in a Methodist church where his great-grandfather, Howard Echols, was the first black pastor. Lowery’s father, a grocery store owner, often protested against racism in the community.

After college, Lowery edited a newspaper and taught school in Birmingham, but the idea of becoming a minister “just kept gnawing and gnawing at me”, he said.

After marrying Evelyn Gibson, a Methodist preacher’s daughter, he began his first pastorate in Birmingham in 1948.

In a 1998 interview, Lowery said he was optimistic that true racial equality would one day be achieved.

“I believe in the final triumph of righteousness,” he said. “The Bible says weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

A member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Lowery is survived by his three daughters, Yvonne Kennedy, Karen Lowery and Cheryl Lowery-Osborne.