An associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a participant in many of the direct action projects of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), James Morris Lawson was a minister and civil rights leader who trained many activists in nonviolent resistance.
The son of Philane May Cover and Reverend James Morris, Lawson was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1928. He earned his B.A. from Baldwin-Wallace College in 1952 and his S.T.B. from Boston University in 1960. He also attended Oberlin College Graduate School of Theology from 1956 to 1958 and Vanderbilt University from 1958 to 1960. A conscientious objector, Lawson was imprisoned for refusing to serve with the armed forces during the Korean War. Following his parole from prison, he traveled to India and performed missionary work with the Methodist church. While in India, he studied Mahatma Gandhi's use of nonviolence to achieve political change. In 1956, Lawson returned to the United States and resumed his studies at Oberlin.
When James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr. met in 1957, King urged Lawson to move to the South and begin teaching nonviolence on a large scale. Later that year, Lawson moved to Nashville and organized a workshop on nonviolence for students at Vanderbilt University and the city's four black colleges. These students—who included Diane Nash, Marion Barry, John Lewis, and James Bevel—planned nonviolent demonstrations in Nashville. They conducted test sit-ins in late 1959. In February of 1960, following the lunch counter sit-ins initiated by students at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, Lawson and over 500 students launched a similar protest in Nashville's downtown stores. More than 150 students were arrested before city leaders agreed to desegregate some lunch counters. The discipline of the Nashville students became a model for sit-ins in other southern cities.
Lawson and the Nashville student leaders were influential in the founding conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) held later that spring. Their commitment to nonviolence and the Christian ideal of "the beloved community" helped to shape SNCC's early direction. Lawson co-authored the statement of purpose adopted by the conference, which emphasized the religious and philosophical foundations of nonviolent direct action. "By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence," it stated, "nonviolence nurtures the atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities."
Lawson was associated with the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) from 1957 to 1969, SNCC from 1960 to 1964, and the SCLC from 1960 to 1967. For each organization, he led workshops on nonviolent methods of protest, often in preparation for major campaigns. He also participated in the final leg of the 1961 Freedom Rides. In 1968, at Lawson's request, King traveled to Memphis to draw attention to the plight of striking sanitation workers in the city. It was during this campaign that King was assassinated on 4 April 1968 .
Lawson continued to work with various civil rights groups following King's assassination. In 1973, he became a board member of the SCLC and served as president of the Los Angeles chapter for fourteen years. He was also the pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles from 1975 to 1999. A committed activist, Lawson has campaigned against violence, demonstrated for equal rights of gays and lesbians, and worked to promote community diversity and solidarity.