http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/storylink_217_224.aspxBy Tom Baxter
Southern Political Report
February 17, 2008 — James Orange was not as famous as some others who emerged from the Civil Rights era, but within the movement he was an iconic figure.
You can spot him in any number of photos over the years, of voting rights marches, union organizing efforts – and with the mule-drawn wagon at Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral. He is usually on one side or another of somebody else, a 300-pound-plus “gentle giant,” providing a protecting presence in the most stressful of confrontations. He was also the veteran of that era who stayed closest to the ground, politically, spending most of his life as an AFL-CIO field organizer.
Orange’s death, which came unexpectedly Saturday in an Atlanta hospital where he had gone for a routine gall bladder surgery, comes at a fateful time for the inheritors of the movement he was so much a part of.
His funeral will bring together many of the lions of the old movement, and the Obama-Clinton fight, and particularly the confusion over where Rep. John Lewis stands, will likely be the subject of much conversation before and after the ceremonies.
Orange, we think, would have liked being close to the center of political action, even in his passing. He was a beloved figure, and the farewell to him will be quite a moment.
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