PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Biography.
- Born: September 22,1928 (age 86), Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
- Residence: Nashville, Tennessee.
- Nationality: American.
- Education: Baldwin Wallace College, Oberlin College & Vanderbilt University
- Occupation: Activist, & Professor.
Who is James Lawson?
James Morris Lawson Jr. Is an American activist and university professor. He was leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the American Civil Rights.
Why James Lawson is important?
Lawson coordinated the Freedom Riders, interracial groups of activists who rode interstate buses into the Deep South to exercise their civil rights under the Supreme Court’s anti-segregation rulings.
What's James Lawson contribution to the Civil Rights Movement ?
In 1968, Lawson chaired the strike committee for sanitation workers in Memphis, TN. At Lawson's request, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to the striking workers on
the day before his assassination.
In 1974, Lawson moved to Los Angeles to lead Holman United Methodist Church where he served as pastor for 25 years before retiring in 1999. Throughout his career and into retirement, he has remained active in various human rights advocacy campaigns, including immigrant rights and opposition to war and militarism.
In recent years he has been a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University.
