Civil rights leader James Lawson, who learned from Gandhi, used nonviolent resistance and the ‘power of love’ to challenge injustice

Civil rights activist James M. Lawson Jr. speaks in Murfreesboro, Tenn., in 2015. AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File by Anthony Siracusa, St. John Fisher University Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., who died on June 9, 2024, at the age of 95, was a Methodist minister and a powerful advocate of nonviolence during the Civil Rights Movement. Lawson is best known for piloting two crucial civil rights campaigns – one in Nashville in 1960 and the other in Memphis in 1968. In Nashville, Lawson trained students in the systematic use of nonviolent pressure. Interracial teams of students would sit at local lunch counters reserved for White people to defy segregation laws. Most importantly, he prepared them to be beaten or arrested. Following the example of Mahatma Gandhi, who used nonviolent resistance to challenge the British occupation of India, students engaged in collective nonviolent direct action. When the first wave of students were beaten or arrested, another wave of students flowed in behind them to take their places. Hundreds were arrested or beaten before their actions led Nashville Mayor Ben West to publicly declare segregation immoral – a signal to downtown business owners it was time to end the policy of racial segregation...