Did you know?
(Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series).
It was on Feb. 6, 1957, when the Rev. James Morris Lawson Jr., a native of Uniontown, first shook the hand of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Two sons of two preachers; two young preachers themselves — with a singular goal — they both wanted to rip down the walls of segregation, but by using active, nonviolent means.
King had helped organize the bus boycotts in Montgomery, Ala. Lawson feels he really “met” King while he was India, because he had seen his efforts on BBC reports of that event that had been beamed across the world.
Lawson knew then that he and Dr. King shared the principals of Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance.
So, when they were introduced to each other at Oberlin College, and when King discussed joining the desegregation effort in the South, it struck an important chord when he told Lawson, “Come now. We don’t have anyone like you down there.”
Lawson did move south. He became a divinity student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
He became the southern director for CORE, and he set out to mentor young students at Vanderbilt and nearby Fisk University in the tactics of nonviolent direct action.
Many of the future leaders of the civil rights movement had been in Lawson’s workshops under the auspices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
He and his fellow nonviolent activists from Atlanta helped to form the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
But while he was at Vanderbilt, and even though his efforts were to organize peaceful protests, they were considered too radical for the school’s administration. He was famously thrown out of the school. (In 2006, Vanderbilt apologized for the expulsion, and he even became a member of the faculty).
When, in May of 1961, Freedom Riders rode buses into the Deep South to test the vicious local laws that promoted segregation on various forms of public transportation, Lawson was an integral part of it. There would be angry mobs, beatings and threats of violence along the way. Yet, as his bus rolled into Jackson, Miss., he was quoted as saying, “We would rather risk violence and travel like ordinary travelers.”
Those Freedom Riders shed light on one of the darkest chapters in American history.
Who were those people who wanted to deny people their right to ride on a bus, or to sit at a lunch-counter?
Lawson confronted them face-to-face. He met them head-on. He pulled back the thin veil from their self-righteousness.
But there would be far more for this Uniontown native to do. After leaving Nashville, he continued his ministry and his teachings in Memphis, Tenn.
In 1968, when two of the city’s sanitation workers had been crushed to death, their black co-workers went on strike. They wanted union recognition, and they wanted higher wages.
Lawson became the chairman of their strike committee.
It was, once again, simply a matter of dignity.
Lawson summoned his old friend and confidant, Martin Luther King, Jr. to bolster the efforts of the striking workers.
After King arrived in Memphis on April 3, 1968, he gave what is now known as the “Mountaintop” speech.
In his remarks before that famous speech, he referred to Rev. James Morris Lawson as “the leading non-violent theorist in the world.”
The following day, Dr. King was felled by a lone gunman.
James Earl Ray was caught and convicted of his murder.
Yet, a true indication of Lawson’s passion for justice lies in his belief that Ray did not kill his fellow civil rights champion.
In October of 1978, Ray was married while he was in prison. Lawson conducted the jailhouse marriage ceremony.
In May of 1998, when Ray died in prison, Lawson flew from California to officiate at his funeral.
For most of us, those actions may have seemed ironic. For this Uniontown native, they were just the right things to do.