James M. Lawson, Jr. Papers

Reverend James Morris Lawson Jr was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1928. As a high school student, he followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to become a minister, getting his local license his senior year. After graduating high school, Lawson enrolled at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio where he joined the local chapter of the Fellowship for Reconciliation, the largest and oldest pacifist organization in the United States. In 1951, two months before he was due to graduate with a Bachelor’s in Sociology, Lawson was drafted for the Korean War. A conscientious objector, he refused to take a student or ministerial deferment and was arrested for failure to report. He served fourteen months of his three year sentence in federal prison before being paroled.

In 1953, Lawson traveled to India as a missionary for the Methodist church. During his three year stay, he studied the nonviolent resistance techniques pioneered by Mohandas Gandhi and his followers. Upon his return to the United States, Lawson enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio to study theology. He met Martin Luther King Jr in 1957. King, a fellow proponent of Gandhian nonviolence, urged Lawson to come to the south to help in the fight for civil rights.

Lawson moved to Nashville that same year to become the southern field secretary for the Fellowship for Reconciliation, he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and transferred to Vanderbilt University to continue his studies in theology at the Divinity School. Called “the foremost nonviolence theorist in the world” by King, Lawson became the director of nonviolent education for the SCLC. He led workshops in nonviolent tactics and helped organize the Nashville sit-ins which challenged segregation at downtown lunch counters. Future leaders of the Civil Rights Movement such as John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, C.T. Vivian, James Bevel, and Marion Barry trained under him.

In 1960, in what would become known as “the Lawson affair,” he was asked to withdraw from Vanderbilt because of his activism or face expulsion. He refused to withdraw and was expelled the next day, March 3,1960. He was due to graduate from Vanderbilt’s Divinity School that May.

Lawson’s expulsion drew national attention to the school. Students as far as Yale University staged walk-outs in protest and sixteen professors as well as the dean of Vanderbilt’s Divinity School tendered their resignation with other faculty members poised to do the same. A compromise was eventually reached that would allow Lawson to complete his studies, but he had already transferred to Boston University. Lawson would return to Vanderbilt while on sabbatical in 1971. Despite never earning a degree from Vanderbilt, Lawson would be honored as a Distinguished Alumnus in 1996 by the Divinity School and again in 2005 by the Alumni Association. He would teach at Vanderbilt as a Distinguished Visiting Professor from 2006-2009 and donate his papers and a collection of photographs to the school in 2013 and 2020 respectively.

Lawson continued his ministry work while working alongside Martin Luther King as the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum. He was pastor at Scott Chapel Methodist Church in Shelbyville, Tennessee from 1960-1962 while he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and organized the 1961 Freedom Rides. From 1962-1974, he served the congregation at Centenary United Methodist Church in Memphis. During that time, he went to Southeast Asia in 1965 as a representative of the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Clergymen’s Emergency Committee on Vietnam, helped coordinate the James Meredith March in Mississippi in 1966, and chaired the strategy committee for the Memphis Sanitation Strike in 1967. It was during the strike that Martin Luther King’s assassination happened in 1968.

In 1974, Lawson and his family moved to Los Angeles to lead Holman United Methodist Church, the largest UMC congregation in the area. He would serve there as pastor for 25 years. During that time, he was arrested for praying on the White House grounds in 1981, chaired the Peace Sunday Movement in 1982, addressed peace marchers in West Berlin, and served as president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from 1979-1993. He also hosted a weekly call-in show, “Lawson Live,” for ten years.

Although he retired from preaching in 1999, Lawson continued to teach nonviolence through teaching engagements, leading workshops, and giving speeches in his ongoing advocacy and fight for the rights of the oppressed around the world. In March 2021, Lawson received the NAACP Chairman’s Award for his activism and contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He passed away in Los Angeles on June 9, 2024.