
Cordy Tindell Vivian (30 July 1924-17 July 2020) was an African-American Baptist minister and Civil Rights movement activist.
Biography[]
Cordy Tindell Vivian was born in Boonville, Missouri on 30 July 1924, and he was raised in Macomb, Illinois. He participated in civil rights activism from a young age and studied at a Baptist seminary in Nashville, Tennessee during the 1950s. He became a leader of the SNCC and SCLC, organizing the first sit-ins in Nashville in 1990 and the first civil rights march in 1961. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama would call Vivian, "the greatest preacher to ever live," and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 8 August 2013. He died in Atlanta on 17 July 2020, the same day as John Lewis' death.