Audubon Ballroon (he/him)James Morris Lawson Jr. (born Sept 22 1928)
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#blacklivesstillmatter #blackmen #blackpeople #blackamerican #police #whitepeople #whitedevil #blacktivists #blackprofessors #blackmastodon #blackhistory
is US activist & university professor. Leading theoretician & tactician of nonviolence within Civil Rights Movement
Bc of refusal to serve in US military when drafted, he was convicted of draft evasion & sentenced to 2 years in prison
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He went as a Methodist missionary to Nagpur, India, where he studied satyagraha, a form of nonviolence resistance developed by [the racist] Mohandas Gandhi [ https://mastodon.social/@audubonballroon/115223229681579584 ] and his followers. He returned to the US in 1956, entering the Graduate School of Theology at Oberlin College in Ohio.
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One of his Oberlin professors introduced him to MLK Jr. In 1957, King urged Lawson to move to south telling him, "Come now. We don't have anyone like you down there." He moved to Nashville, where he attended Vanderbilt University and began teaching nonviolent protest techniques.
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In 1959 and 1960, they and other Lawson-trained activists launched the Nashville sit-ins to challenge segregation in downtown stores. In February 1960, following the lunch sit-ins by students at the Woolworth's stores in Greensboro, NC, Lawson and several others were arrested.
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Their actions led to desegregation of some lunch counters.
Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt due to his participation in these activities. During the 2006 graduation ceremony, Vanderbilt apologized for its treatment of Lawson.
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Lawson's students played a leading role in the Open Theater Movement, the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, Freedom Summer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the Children's Crusade in Birmingham, the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, the Chicago Freedom Movement,
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and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement over the next few years.
In 1961, Lawson helped develop strategy for the Freedom Riders. Lawson encouraged the students to plan a second wave of Freedom Rides from Alabama to continue the work and Lawson joined the group
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They arrived in Jackson safe, but when they filed into a "whites only" waiting room they were arrested. The NAACP offered to pay for bail, but Lawson and others refused bail and waited for trial. The judge found all 27 guilty and they remained in jail.
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Lawson and the Freedom Riders met with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and, in September 1961, President John F. Kennedy ordered that passengers be able to sit anywhere.
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Lawson died at a hospital in Los Angeles, on June 9, 2024, at the age of 95. This was the night before the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's filibuster breaking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lawson_(activist)
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