The posthumous memoir of Rev. James Lawson Jr., peer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., mentor to Congressman John Lewis and the Freedom Riders, and the principal architect of a nonviolent resistance movement that changed the world.
Rev. Lawson was one of the most influential yet often unsung leaders of the civil rights era. He rose to the national stage as a strategist whose vision and ethics shaped some of the most pivotal campaigns in American history. He dedicated his long, rich life to dismantling racial, social, and economic injustice.
Lawson's story began far from the national spotlight. One of nine children in a working-class Ohio family, and the son and grandson of Methodist ministers, he was licensed to preach before graduating from high school.
In this vital memoir, Lawson recalls serving time in prison for refusing the Korean War draft, learning from independence movements during three years in India and Africa, and developing a disciplined system of nonviolent direct action centered in love and moral clarity which became the foundation for a new kind of revolution in America. He taught nonviolence to the Little Rock Nine, the Mississippi Freedom Summer volunteers, and countless other civil rights foot soldiers. He was a leader in the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, the 1963 Birmingham campaign, the 1966 Meredith March Against Fear, and the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike.
Nonviolent delivers an intimate self-portrait of Lawson as a man who consistently recognized the inherent dignity of everyone, even those who opposed him. His narrative challenges all forms of violence, including police brutality, enforced poverty, and what he called plantation capitalism. It shows his quest for justice continuing well into the 21st century, as he helped foster a more inclusive labor movement and an enduring immigrant rights movement in Los Angeles.
Nonviolent is at once a riveting historical narrative from a central figure in global liberation and a testament to what it means to compel a nation to live up to its founding ideals of liberty and justice for all.
