Rev. James M Lawson, Jr., bellwether of nonviolence in the civil rights movement
An iconic stalwart and a progenitor of nonviolence in the civil rights movement, the Rev. James Lawson, Jr. who inherited a Methodist ministry from his father and grandfather, died on June 9 in Los Angeles, Calif. from cardiac arrest. He was 95.
Rev. Lawson’s deep immersion in nonviolence that he learned during his study in India was instrumental in giving Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the ballast he needed during the turbulent sixties and the struggle for civil rights. His teaching and particularly his brilliance as a tactician were indispensable for a cadre of activists such as John Lewis, James Bevel and Diane Nash, to name but a few.
He was born on September 22, 1928 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania to Philane May Cover and James Morris Lawson, Sr., the sixth of nine children and was raised in Massillon, Ohio. Given his lineage and connection to the Methodist church, a ministry license he acquired in 1947, while still in high school, was inevitable.
At Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, Lawson studied sociology. When he was drafted to serve in the U.S. military, he resisted and was convicted of evasion. He was sentenced to two years in prison, serving 13 months before returning to college to earn his degree. After becoming a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), he joined the CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), all of which prepared him for his missionary trip to India, to study the ideas and practice of Mahatma Gandhi.
Upon his return to the States in 1956, he enrolled at Oberlin College’s Graduate School of Theology. It was there that he was formally introduced to Dr. King who a year later urged him to move to the south, convincing him of his uniqueness and how vitally important an asset he would be to the evolving movement. Lawson heeded the request and moved to Nashville, where he attended Vanderbilt University and began teaching the tactics of nonviolence, incorporation with the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference as well as an affiliate of SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference). Through these entities he began launching workshops at selected churches in Nashville.
“In 1960, intensive role-playing and discussions among Lawson, John Lewis, C.T. Vivian, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafeyette, and others in the Nashville student movement helped to launch sit-ins at lunch counters, to spark mass marches, and to fill the jails in an attempt to desegregate downtown Nashville,” Michael Honey wrote in the Introduction of Lawson’s book Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom (2022). One of the significant developments of this activism was the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
In February 1960, with the sit-in underway at the Woolworth’s stores in Greensboro, North Carolina, Lawson and several other activists were arrested, but their action proved pivotal in desegregating several lunch counters. Subsequently, these activities led to his being expelled from Vanderbilt. Such an expulsion came as a result of misleading stories published in the Nashville Banner newspaper. This action was supported by the Chancellor Harvie Branscomb who later regretted that he did not delay the decision until it was reviewed by a committee at least for three months until Lawson’s graduation.
After the initial wave of sit-ins, Lawson strategized with the students for a second advance of Freedom Rides from Alabama in which he joined. When they arrived at the whites-only waiting room they were arrested. They refused the bail payment offered by the NAACP, choosing to wait for trial. In September 1961, President Kennedy ordered that passengers be allowed to sit anywhere. A year later, Lawson played a critical role in uniting Dr. King and Rev. Bevel, with them agreeing to set aside their differences and work together. One of the consolations was Bevel’s appointment as SCLC’s Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education.
In 1962, he was the pastor of Centenary Methodist Church in Memphis; six years later when the sanitation workers began striking for higher wages and union recognition, Lawson served as chair of the strike committee and it was he who extended the invitation for Dr. King to speak in Memphis where he delivered his famous “Mountaintop” and speech was killed the following day.
He became pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles in 1974 and remained there until his retirement in 1999. Meanwhile, his commitment to civil rights never wavered with involvements in the labor movement, civil liberties, gay and reproductive rights. His activities included media formats where his radio and television helped promote social and human rights issues.
When Vanderbilt University sponsored a three-day Freedom Ride commemorative program in 2007 Lawson participated. A year before this event, during a graduation ceremony, the university apologized for its treatment of him and he later returned to teach at the college. His papers were donated to Vanderbilt in 2013. For several years he served as a visiting scholar at California State University Northridge (CSUN), where he taught a semester-long course on nonviolence.
He was part of a team at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict conducted an eight-day seminar on civil resistance facilitated by Lawson in 2013 and 2014. A class Lawson taught inspired UCLA students to publish Nonviolence and Social Movements, a book that focused on the principles of nonviolence and social change that Lawson taught. Awards and commendations flowed ceaselessly to him for his tireless advocacy for civil and human rights, and some of this remarkable life was captured in the film The Butler and he was the subject of the film “Love and Solidarity: Rev. James Lawson and Nonviolence in the Search for Workers Rights,” bJamesy Michael Honey.
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