County Commissioner. From 1987-1992 he served in executive level positions in government where he was responsible for implementing policy.
In 1992-1996 Farris was tapped to become president and CEO of the Clean Air Industries Inc., a company that was not only involved in environmental cleanup but also developed a patent technology which allowed combustion engines of trucks, buses and cars to run on clean burning natural (Methane) gas. In 1996, he was appointed chief operating officer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, and in 2005 he was appointed president and CEO of the King Center and served in that capacity until March 2010. Farris currently serves as Senior Fellow of the King Center where he continues to write, research and lecture on the life, philosophy and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
Bernard LaFayette Jr. has been a Civil Rights Movement activist, minister, educator, lecturer, and is an authority on the strategy on nonviolent social change. He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and was a leader of the Nashville Movement in 1960 and on the Freedom Rides in 1961 and the 1965 Selma Movement. He directed the Alabama Voter Registration Project in 1962, and he was appointed National Program Administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and national coordinator of the 1968 Poor Peoples’ Campaign by Martin Luther King Jr.
An ordained minister, LaFayette earned his B.A. from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tenn., and his Ed.M. and Ed.D from Harvard University. He has served on the faculties of Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta and Alabama State University in Montgomery, where he was dean of the Graduate School; he also was principal of Tuskegee Institute High School in Tuskegee, Ala., and a teaching fellow at Harvard University. In addition, LaFayette has authored several publications.
Dr. LaFayette is a former president of the American Baptist College of ABT Seminary in Nashville; Scholar in Residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta; and pastor emeritus of the Progressive Baptist Church in Nashville. He is a native of Tampa, Fla., and is married to the former Kate Bulls.
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