News
Updates from the Institute and from the wider community carrying Dr. LaFayette’s work forward.
Photographs by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout
In remembrance · Birthday tribute
Every July 29, we mark the day it began
A standing remembrance · Lafayette Institute of Nonviolence
Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr. was born on July 29, 1940, in Tampa, Florida. Each year on that date, the Institute pauses to remember the life that gives this work its name.
He was twenty years old when he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960, and twenty-one when he rode as a Freedom Rider in 1961. He went to Selma when others said the city could not be organized, and he stayed.
“The next thing we must do is to institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., last words to Dr. LaFayette, April 4, 1968
Dr. LaFayette treated that sentence as an assignment and spent the rest of his life completing it: in the leadership of SCLC and the King Center, in classrooms at Harvard, Emory, and the University of Rhode Island, and in training rooms around the world where he taught Kingian Nonviolence to people who had never met Dr. King but would carry his methods anyway.
Dr. LaFayette passed on March 5, 2026. The Institute keeps both dates, but this one belongs to the beginning: the day he arrived, and everything that came of it.
If you were trained by him, worked beside him, or were changed by something he said in a room, we would like to hear about it. Memories shared with the Institute become part of the archive his family and colleagues are building.
Published by the Lafayette Institute of Nonviolence. Tampa, Florida.
In Memoriam
David Jehnsen, co-author of the Kingian Nonviolence curriculum, has passed
July 20, 2026 · Warsaw, Indiana
Together with Bernard LaFayette, Jr., he codified the training curriculum that carried Dr. King’s methods to thousands of people around the world.
Kingian nonviolence co-author David Jehnsen passed on Monday, July 20, 2026, in Warsaw, Indiana.
Together with Bernard LaFayette, Jr., David codified the Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation curriculum, based on their experiences working with Dr. King and in the Civil Rights Movement, which inspired and equipped thousands of people around the world to use and connect with the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Movement both as a source for personal transformation and to address problems of racism, injustice, and violence.
Dedicated to Dr. King’s vision of institutionalizing nonviolence, Jehnsen developed long-term nonviolence projects in Cuba and New Orleans, and he played a key role drafting the legislation that created the United States Institute of Peace. David always kept the next three generations of emerging leaders in mind. He would proudly say that all his work naturally grew from values that he learned growing up in the Michigan District of the Church of the Brethren.
Jehnsen is survived by his wife, Deb Jehnsen.
Service details
Saturday, August 1
Faith Bible Fellowship Church
7281 E 600 N, North Webster, IN 46555
- Schedule
Visitation 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Service 12 p.m. Meal to follow
Submitted by Matt Guynn, Co-Executive Director and Director of Organizing, On Earth Peace.