The Rev. James L. Bevel, 72, a prominent figure in the civil rights movement whose legacy was clouded by an incest conviction, died Friday in Virginia after a fight with pancreatic cancer, said a daughter, Chevara Orrin. Bevel was a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. and architect of the 1963 Children's Crusade in Birmingham, Ala. In April, a jury convicted Bevel of incest for having sex more than a decade ago with a then-teenage daughter. Bevel served several months of his 15-year sentence before he was released in November on bond while appealing. A Baptist minister, Bevel was a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, two of the stalwart organizations that led efforts in the 1960s to desegregate the South. Decades later, he helped organize the Million Man March.

Carol Chomsky, 78, a linguist and education specialist whose work helped illuminate the ways in which language comes to children, died Friday at her home in Lexington, Mass. The cause was cancer, her sister-in-law Judith Brown Chomsky said. A nationally recognized authority on the acquisition of spoken and written language, Chomsky was on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 1972 until her retirement in 1997. She was a frequent traveling companion of her husband, linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky.

Conor Cruise O'Brien, 91, a leading Irish author, politician and diplomat who rose to international prominence while heading a U.N. mission in the troubled Congo and remained an independent, often-contrarian thinker amid the religious strife of his homeland, died Dec. 18 at his home near Dublin. No immediate cause of death was reported, but he suffered a mild stroke 10 years ago.

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