and of the Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs; honorary board of the Advisory Council on Religious Rights in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Civil Rights Movement A supporter of civil rights, Archbishop Iakovos was one of the few prominent non-African American clergymen—and the only Church leader—who had the courage to walk hand in hand with Martin Luther King Jr. during the famous march in Selma, Alabama. A picture of this historic moment, with Archbishop Iakovos to the right of Martin Luther King Jr., was captured on the cover of Life Magazine on March 26, 1965. According to Grammenos "when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched from the Brown Chapel of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to the Dallas County Courthouse in Selma, Alabama, on March 15, 1965, Archbishop Iakovos, leader of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, was among the few white men who accompanied him. Iakovos, who had experienced religious oppression himself as a child, accepted Dr. King's invitation demonstrating his commitment to freedom and civil rights as key principles of the American life. Iakovos stated that the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese could no longer remain a 'spectator and listener', and it must labor and struggle to develop its spiritual life. In the end, his firm support of Dr. King's initiative helped bring to fruition the passage of voting rights legislation, advancing equality among his communicants." Ecclesiastic Relationships and Death Iakovos met Pope John XXIII in 1959, the first Greek Orthodox archbishop to meet with a Roman Catholic Pope in 350 years. He spent nine years on the World Council of Churches and met with every U.S. president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. Iakovos came into conflict with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I after he supported a move by 29 bishops towards the administrative unification of Eastern Orthodox churches in America at the Ligonier Meeting. It is widely believed that this clash forced him to resign in 1996. Archbishop Iakovos, died on April 10, 2005, at Stamford Hospital, Connecticut, from a pulmonary ailment. He was buried on April 15 in the grounds of the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts. Titles Archbishop Iakovos was the last Primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America who held