The Rev. James Lawson, an architect of the Civil Rights Movement who preached nonviolent protest, has died. He's shown here speaking to union workers in 2011 on the anniversary of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images North America hide caption The Rev.
James Lawson was a staunch advocate for nonviolent resistance to racism, even in the face of brutality. A Methodist minister and student of Gandhi, Lawson mentored civil rights leaders, and was the tactician behind key desegregation campaigns in the South, including the Nashville Sit-Ins, the Freedom Rides, and the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. The Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. called him the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence. Lawson was 95 and died Sunday in Southern California, according to his son J.
Morris Lawson III. James Morris Lawson Jr. was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1928.
His father and grandfather were Methodist ministers, but Lawson credited his mother, Philane, for instilling in him the power of nonviolent resistance. In a 2018 interview with NPR, he described coming home from an altercation as an 8-year-old child. “For the first time after running an errand on a spring day, I had just slapped a white child for calling me the N-word,” he said.
He said his mother asked him “what good that served?” and told her son to find a better way. “So as a consequence of that conversation . .
. I decided that I would never again fight with my fists to hurt s.