In Memoriam: Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. (1928 – 2024)

James M. Lawson Jr., a Methodist minister who became the teacher of the civil rights movement, has died.

He was 95.

Rev James M. Lawson Jr passes

Lawson died Sunday of cardiac arrest en route to a Los Angeles hospital, according to his son J. Morris Lawson III.

Civil rights activist

Lawson was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1928, according to his biography by The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

For decades, Lawson worked as a pastor, labor movement organizer and university professor.

Recruited by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Lawson trained hundreds of youthful protesters in nonviolent tactics that made the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins a model for fighting racial inequality in the 1960s.

Dubbed ad “the leading nonviolence theorist” by King, Lawson had studied Gandhi’s philosophy in India before joining the movement in the South. He led seminars throughout the region and became a gallivanting spokesperson for the Southern Christian Leadership.  Conference.

In 1968, he invited King to speak to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, where the captivating preacher was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel.

Lawson committed his life to civil rights, working with various groups in the South until 1974, when he moved to L.A. to become pastor of Holman United Methodist Church. He led the church for 25 years. He retired in 1999 but remained an activist for peace and social justice.

He also taught at the University of California Los Angeles’ college of social sciences, and university officials there called him “one of the most impactful social justice leaders of the twentieth-century.”