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Social Reformer, Civil Rights Activist. He was a top lieutenant to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., organizing his early marches and demonstrations across the South. He helped lead the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, when white troopers and sheriff's deputies used tear gas, nightsticks and whips to break up the march. The outrage over this incident, known as "Bloody Sunday", led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. In 1970, his activism against poverty led him to start Atlanta's annual "Feed The Hungry and Homeless" Thanksgiving dinner, helping thousands of poor and homeless every year to meals, counseling, and health care. In 1987, he led two marches into Forsyth County, Georgia, a then virtually all-white rural county north of Atlanta which later became a fast-growing Atlanta suburb. The first march led to a confrontation where Ku Klux Klan members and supporters chanted racial slurs and pelted them with rocks and bottles. The second march through Forsyth County attracted over 20,000 participants and became the largest civil rights demonstration since the 1960s. He declared himself to be "unbought and unbossed", comparing himself to King's other lieutenants who had converted their association with the civil rights movement into lucrative high-paying careers for themselves.