IN THE LATE 1940s, a 12-year-old George Lakey preached a sermon at his church declaring racial equality to be the will of God. He was never invited to preach at that Evangelical Congregational Church again. But that incident explains the life that followed.

While in college, Lakey became a Quaker. He graduated from the historically Black Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. He thought about being a musician. He considered teaching high school social studies. He pursued a Ph.D. in sociology, but instead of retaking his oral exams, Lakey used his schooling “to become an evidence-based social activist with skills to do homework for the movement,” as he writes in his autobiography Dancing With History. He spent more than six decades as an activist committed to practicing and training others in nonviolent direct action. (Music never left him, and he spent many years teaching peace studies classes to college
 students.)

In 1965, George and his then-wife Berit Lakey (who are both white) adopted Christina, a Black girl only a few months old. The Lakeys soon afterward purchased a house in West Philadelphia, where they also raised Peter, who was also Black and adopted, and their youngest daughter, Ingrid. George lives in that same house 
today.

And yet, rooted as he has been, a lot changed in his life over the years. In the early 1970s, he came out as bisexual at an annual Quaker gathering, in front of a thousand people. In 1985, after 26 years of marriage, he and his wife split up. Not long after, his son Peter died, “of poisoning,” at the age of 20.