Civil rights icon Rev. James Lawson Jr., who trained activists in nonviolent protest, has died at age 95, pastor says

Source: CNN US

Published 6:33 PM EDT, Mon June 10, 2024


CNN — The Rev. James Lawson Jr., a civil rights icon who trained activists in nonviolent protest, died Sunday, according to the pastor at Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, where Lawson was reverend emeritus. Lawson died in Los Angeles, Rev. Christian Washington told CNN Monday. He was 95.

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. In 1951, he was imprisoned for refusing to register with the armed forces. After his parole the following year, he traveled to India for missionary work with the Methodist Church, the biography states. There, he studied Mahatma Gandhi’s use of nonviolence.

He returned to the United States in 1956 and studied at Oberlin College School of Theology and Vanderbilt University, according to the biography. Lawson met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the following year.

The civil rights leader urged Lawson to move to the South to teach nonviolence to others, his biography states, and that same year, Lawson would organize workshops on nonviolence for residents of Nashville and students at Vanderbilt and elsewhere.

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