Vivian, a civil rights veteran who worked alongside the Rev. Vivian, a civil rights veteran who worked alongside the Rev. His civil rights work stretched back more than six decades, to his first sit-in demonstrations in the 1940s in Peoria, Ill. He met King soon after the budding civil rights leaders victory in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. Speaking with students in Tennessee 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, he explained that the civil rights movement was effective because activists used strategies to make sure that their messages were amplified.