BATON ROUGE, La. – The Rev. T. J. Jemison, a longtime Louisiana pastor and civil rights leader, has died. He was 95.
Jemison’s son, Ted Jemison, told The Associated Press that his father died Friday evening of natural causes at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center.
Ted Jemison said his father was a longtime pastor of Mount Zion First Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, La., and helped organize the Baton Rouge bus boycott in 1953.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sought his advice when organizing the famous bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., two years later, Ted Jemison said.
One thing King wanted to know was how the leaders of the Baton Rouge boycott arranged carpool rides for blacks so they could avoid using the buses, Ted Jemison recalled.