The Rev. James Lawson Jr. has died at 95, civil rights leader's family says – Trentonian

The Rev. James Lawson Jr. has died. He was 95. His family said Monday that Lawson died peacefully on Sunday. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called Lawson “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” Lawson and King were both 28 years old when they bonded over the ideas of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. Lawson schooled civil rights activists to withstand brutal treatment from white authorities. He shaped the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to organize the sit-in movement, and he organized the sanitation workers strike that brought King to Memphis. Lawson said decades after King’s assassination that he was still anxious and frustrated because their work remains unfinished.

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