Longtime civil rights activist and South Carolina community organizer Kevin Alexander Gray has died after suffering a heart attack. He was 65 years old. In the 1980s, Gray served as South Carolina campaign manager for Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign and helped lead protests against South Africa’s apartheid government. He was a past president of the South Carolina ACLU and fought for years to get the Confederate battle flag removed from South Carolina’s state Capitol grounds. The flag was ultimately moved to a museum in 2015, following the massacre of nine Black worshipers by a racist gunman at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Kevin Gray spoke to Democracy Now! after the murders.

Kevin Alexander Gray: “When you talk about white supremacy as a structure, you have to talk about white supremacy as the structure that permeates America, that the foundation of our politics in this country is white supremacy. White supremacy is not merely the Ku Klux Klan and race hate groups. White supremacy is a structure which keeps people down based on race, that keeps people in power. Racism is about power.” 

Click here to see our many interviews with Kevin Alexander Gray over the years.