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"James Bevel . . . an experienced leader, set 'D-Day' when thousands of children would go to jail."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"They announced this important meeting, and said James Bevel would be speaking that night. James Bevel did speak and everything he said, you know, made sense."
--Fannie Lou Hamer
"I was inspired by Jesus, Malcolm X, James Bevel, and Martin Luther King, Jr."
--Rev. Jesse L. Jackson
"You were like an angel to me . . . God sent you to me to talk about a day of atonement."
--Minister Louis Farrakhan
"The pattern was always the same, first the local minister spoke, then Bevel, and then King . . . Bevel was the most rousing speaker. He was a firebrand and got the audience riled up . . . An orator without peer.
--Charles Fager, author
"[James Bevel] could do more with young people than any human being on the face of the earth."
--Hosea Williams
"The Bevel story does revise the history of the civil rights movement and it needs to be told."
--Robert St. John
"I don't think we would have had a movement without him...He played a very important role, and that role was translated into a successful movement."
--Andrew Young
"Even the March on Washington was Jim Bevel's idea."
--Bernard Lafayette
"I'd say 99% of the plans and activities in Selma were Bevel's. The Selma Movement was Bevel's baby."
--James Orange
"We would have never gone to Selma, and there would not have been a Voting Rights Bill today if James Bevel had not conceived of the idea. . . Jim was the originator of the idea of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Jim Bevel is the author of that. . . Dr. King could not have done the things he did unless he had a James Bevel."
--Ralph David Abernathy
"He was a great philosopher, an unbelievable philosopher."
--Hosea Williams
"Bevel was the real creative genius of that period."
--Rev. Jesse L. Jackson
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