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Who was James Lawson Jr.? Bio, Net Worth, Wiki, Age, Family, Cause of Death, Height, Facts

Who was James Lawson Jr.?

James Morris Lawson Jr. was an American activist and university professor. He was the leading theorist and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1960s, he served as a mentor for the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University in 1960 for his civil rights activism and later served as a chaplain in Los Angeles for 25 years.

James Lawson Jr. Age

James Lawson Jr. was 95 years old at the time of death.

James Lawson Jr. Wiki – James Lawson Jr. Biography

Lawson was born on September 22, 1928, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, to Philane May Cover and James Morris Lawson Sr. He was the sixth of nine children. He grew up in Massillon, Ohio. Both Lawson’s father and grandfather were Methodist ministers. Lawson received his ministerial license during his senior year of high school in 1947.

Berea studied sociology as a freshman at Baldwin Wallace College in Ohio. Because he refused to serve in the U.S. military when he was drafted, he was convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to two years in prison. He served 13 months of his sentence and returned to university to complete his degree. He joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), an organization led by A. J. Muste, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an affiliated organization of FOR. Both FOR and CORE advocated nonviolent resistance against racism.

As a Methodist missionary, he traveled to Nagpur, India, where he studied satyagraha, a form of nonviolent resistance developed by Mohandas Gandhi and his followers. He returned to the United States in 1956 and entered Oberlin College School of Theology in Ohio. One of his Oberlin professors introduced him to Martin Luther King Jr., who also embraced Gandhi’s principles of nonviolent resistance. He introduced me to. In 1957, King encouraged Lawson to move south, telling him: “Come now. There’s no one like you out there.” He moved to Nashville, where he attended Vanderbilt University and began teaching nonviolent protest techniques.

Lawson attended Oberlin College from 1956 to 1957, and after being there for a year, he married Dorothy Wood and had three sons. He attended Vanderbilt from 1958 to 1960. Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt in March 1960 due to civil rights arrests but received the STB award from Boston University that same year. Lawson was appointed pastor of Scott Church in Shelbyville, Tennessee.

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James Lawson Jr. Career

Lawson moved to Los Angeles in 1974, where he became pastor of Holman United Methodist Church. He retired in 1999 but continued his civil rights work. While in Los Angeles, he was active in the labor movement, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the reproductive choice and gay rights movements. He served as president of Laity United for Economic Justice. During this time, Lawson hosted a weekly radio program, Lawson Live, in which he discussed human and social rights issues. He continued to train activists in nonviolence and supported the rights of immigrants in the United States, the rights of Palestinians, and the rights of workers to a living wage.

In January 2007, Lawson participated in the well-publicized three-day Freedom Ride commemoration program sponsored by Vanderbilt University’s Office of Active Citizenship and Service. The program included an educational bus tour to Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama. Participants also included Civil Rights activists Jim Zwerg, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, C. T. Vivian, and John Seigenthaler; journalists and approximately 180 students, faculty, and administrators from Vanderbilt, Fisk, Tennessee State University, and American Baptist College.

James Lawson Jr. Death

Lawson died in a Los Angeles hospital on June 9, 2024, at the age of 95. His death occurred on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the filibuster being broken by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Awards

In 2004 he received the Society of Jesus International Peace Prize. On December 10, 2021, UCLA announced the dedication of the UCLA Labor Center building next to MacArthur Park as the UCLA James M. Lawson, Jr. It announced that it had been renamed the Study Center.

On April 24, 2019, as a result of a nomination by council member Nick Fish, the mayor and city council of Portland Oregon convened the Reverend James Lawson Jr. in a ceremony held that day at City Hall. He declared the day. That night, Rev. Lawson gave the keynote address to the public at Portland State University at the start of five days of the 6th James Lawson Institute, organized by peace scholar and former SNCC Communications Co-Director Mary E. King (with Julian Bond).

On July 28, 2023, James Lawson High School opened in Nashville, Tennessee. A mile-long (1.6 km) stretch of Adams Boulevard near Holman United Methodist Church was renamed in his honor in 2024.

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