Mt. Zion
Baptist Church

History

Civil Rights leader the Rev. C.T. Vivian, who worked side by side with the late

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., staged his first sit-in when he was a young man living in

Peoria — he helped to successfully integrate Barton’s Cafeteria in the 1940s,

Born July 28, 1924, in Howard County, Mo., Cordy Tindell Vivian moved to Macomb with

his mother when he was a child. He attended Macomb schools and Western Illinois

University, then went to work at Carver Community Center in Peoria.

Vivian met King soon after the budding civil rights leader’s victory in the 1955 Montgomery

Bus Boycott. Before he joined King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1963,

he had participated in the Freedom Rides of 1961, after which he was imprisoned and

beaten in Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Prison. He also participated in the

Selma campaign of 1964, which helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

By that time he had been beaten, nearly drowned, nearly bombed, and jailed

In 2013, Vivian was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was

presented by President Barack Obama. When interviewed about the honor

by Journal Star reporter Pam Adams, Vivian said, “Be sure to say all of my

action, all of my nonviolent social action, started in Peoria. It all goes back

to Macomb and Peoria.” Vivian was 95 when he died of natural causes at

his home in Atlanta.