Washington, March 30 (RHC)-- Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, civil rights pioneer and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, th SCLC, has died at the age of 98.  He passed away of natural causes. 

Reverend Lowery worked closely with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. until King’s assassination in 1968.  He organized the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955.  He delivered protesters’ demands to George Wallace, the state’s segregationist governor, at the 1965 march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery. 

In 2006, at the funeral for Coretta Scott King -- Martin Luther King's widow -- Reverend Lowery blasted President George W. Bush over the Iraq War and his conservative agenda, even as Bush sat in the front row.  He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 by President Barack Obama.