“He is the greatest teacher of nonviolence in America,” said Martin Luther King about Reverend James Lawson.
I introduced Rev. Lawson to some of you last month. Here, I will continue my overview of this remarkable man.
One reason the sit-in movement of the early 1960s was successful was that MLK recruited Rev. Lawson to the South, where Lawson trained the students in nonviolence tactics.
Lawson was a fervent practitioner of nonviolence, enduring beatings as a Freedom Rider and as a demonstrator in Selma. Once, he was spat upon by a white anti-protestor riding a motorcycle, Lawson calmly borrowed a handkerchief, wiped away the spit, and engaged the man in a motorcycle discussion.
In the spring of 1960, the Vanderbilt University Divinity School expelled James Lawson for organizing lunch counter sit-ins and other nonviolent protests. Demonstrations erupted in response to the university’s action, and several faculty members resigned in protest. With national media covering the events, Vanderbilt invited Lawson back. Instead, he accepted Boston University’s invitation to come and finish his studies there.
Also, in the spring of 1960, Lawson drafted the first purpose statement for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an organization led by Nashville students that he had trained and led. With SNCC members, he organized the Freedom Rides in 1961, for which Lawson was arrested and held in a Mississippi prison for weeks.
In addition to violence from whites, the nonviolent demonstrators faced skepticism from blacks. Lawson had to convince other blacks that nonviolence was “deeply rooted in the spirituality of Jesus and the prophetic stories of the Hebrew Bible.” For Lawson, the civil rights protests were not just a political movement; “It was a moment in history when God saw fit to call America back from the depths of moral depravity and onto his path of righteousness.”
Lawson was a pastor in Memphis in 1968 when black sanitation workers began the Memphis sanitation strike for higher wages and union recognition after two of their co-workers were accidentally crushed to death. He was chair of the strike committee and asked MLK to take time out of the Poor People’s Campaign and come assist that fateful effort. On the eve of his assassination, Martin Luther King called Lawson “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”
After that, Rev. Lawson traveled throughout the country and the world to lead workshops and seminars on the philosophy of nonviolence and civil disobedience tactics. He pastored in Los Angeles for 25 years, working with the Justice for Janitors campaign leaders, hotel and restaurant workers, and student activists to develop nonviolent strategies and tactics.
During the 2006 graduation ceremony, Vanderbilt apologized for its treatment of Lawson in 1960. Lawson returned to teach at Vanderbilt as a Distinguished Professor from 2006 to 2009.
In 2022, the Vanderbilt Divinity School honored Rev. Lawson by establishing the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolence. The institute’s purpose is “to nurture evidence-based research and education rooted in nonviolent strategies; create and deepen partnerships in Nashville; and develop leaders equipped to contribute to a thriving society.”
