Civil rights leader who shared MLK s nonviolent vision with young activists dead at 95 al.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from al.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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.
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.