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William Bobby McClain, a longtime leader in the United Methodist Church and the civil rights movement, died November 18 at age 82.

McClain began preaching as a teen­ager in his hometown of Gads­den, Alabama. He met Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama, according to a statement from Wesley Theo­logical Sem­inary, where McClain taught preaching and worship for 34 years.

For 80 years, a book about Christianity bound in the tanned skin of a murdered Lenape Indian was displayed in a glass case outside the library at the Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary in Denver, Colorado.

Donated in 1893 by R. M. Barns, a Methodist minister, the book was written in Latin and appears to have been considered a unique curiosity. In a 1934 story, the Rocky Mountain News called it “a priceless vestment for the teachings of brotherly love.”