Remembering the Nonviolence Teacher for the Civil Rights Movement

by

Advocating Justice

United Methodist Focus | June 18, 2026

Juneteenth and Jim Lawson

Each year on June 19, the United States celebrates Juneteenth National Independence Day as a federal holiday. The name comes from the blending of “June” and “nineteenth,” the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. The celebration of the end of slavery, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, began among freed slaves and other African Americans shortly thereafter. It became a federal holiday in 2021.

This year we have a new book that brings further insight, not about slavery, but about the Jim Crow era that followed Reconstruction. Reconstruction was that period just after the Civil War in which Black people enjoyed rights most of them would not have again for a hundred years. Jim Crow represented the resumed subjection of Black people found during slavery. But that subjection was found in new forms of discrimination that included segregation, withdrawn voting rights, absence of representation in government, and limited economic options. This discrimination was made possible by actions at the federal level by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Restraints present during Reconstruction, which had prohibited states from limiting Black freedom, were removed.

Entitled simply Nonviolent, the Reverend James Lawson describes this memoir as one of Resistance, Agitation and Love. It captures the story of the Jim Crow era through lived experience of a faithful United Methodist pastor and leadership not always acknowledged.

A United Methodist Pastor First and Foremost

Ever since junior high school, “Reverend” had been the title I most felt called to embrace. — Jim Lawson

James Lawson, Jr., was first and foremost a pastor—a United Methodist pastor, having begun as a Methodist pastor in his early years of ministry. He grew up in Massillon, Ohio, shaped by his family and the church. Some lessons he learned in those early years stayed with him for a lifetime. He was later influenced by Methodist institutions, even when he was disappointed by some of them.

He was a student pastor as early as his college years. When he finished his seminary degree (a story yet to come), he was considering the continuation of his nonviolent work for civil rights when he discovered his outgoing bishop had appointed him to Shelbyville, Tennessee. His new bishop, Charles Golden, asked him to “please take this appointment.” He did, even as he continued his involvement with Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) initiatives and other civil rights activities in Nashville.

After two years as pastor in Shelbyville, Bishop Golden appointed Lawson to the Centenary Church in Memphis, the largest congregation in the bishop’s episcopal area (still segregated in 1962). It was later that the sanitation workers’ strike, in which Lawson had been involved for years, brought Martin Luther King, Jr., to Memphis in 1968, where King was assassinated. Lawson would remain at Centenary until 1974 when Bishop Charles Golden again called. Now the bishop was serving in Los Angeles in the integrated United Methodist Church. Bishop Golden appointed Lawson as senior pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, where he served until retirement in 1999.

Pacifist

I’m willing to die for this country, but I am not willing to kill for this country. — Jim Lawson

When Lawson turned 18 in 1946, he was required to register for military service with his local Selective Service office. He went knowing that he must renounce all violence “as my mother and God had charged me to do.” Despite saying he could not serve because of his religious beliefs, the clerk insisted he complete the form. He answered the questions but wrote that he could not serve. A year later he enrolled at nearby Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio (now Baldwin Wallace University and until 2019, a United Methodist-related institution).

Lawson continued college uninterrupted until the spring of his senior year. With only weeks until graduation, he was convicted and sent to federal prison in West Virginia for refusing to be drafted for the Korean War. Some faculty were supportive as well as his bishop, Matthew W. Clair, Jr. Bishop Clair, whose father was one of the first two African American bishops in the Methodist Episcopal Church, had been a chaplain in World War I but later became a pacifist. The college president, John L. Knight, was not supportive and refused to let Lawson receive his college degree.

Lawson was released on parole to the Methodist Board of Missions after thirteen months in prison. He returned to complete his college degree requirements and then began a three-year mission assignment in India. In college and during prison, Lawson studied Gandhi and how nonviolent opposition to oppression had been applied in India. He wanted to learn more.

Expelled from Vanderbilt

Upon returning from India, Lawson began seminary at the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology. He would later describe Oberlin as the “most supportive place I have ever lived.” One day Harvey Cox, the YMCA chaplain, told Lawson that Martin Luther King, Jr., was coming to speak. That is when he and Dr. King met for the first time. King wanted to know about his experience in India and what he had learned about nonviolence. King said Lawson was needed in the South. “Come now. Don’t wait,” said King. Lawson replied, “I will come as fast as I can.” So he applied to Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville. He was the fourth Black student ever accepted.

By now Lawson was working with the Fellowship for Reconciliation (FOR), a peace organization founded in 1914. He had first learned of FOR as a college student when A. J. Muste, the executive director, spoke and became a friend and mentor. He was also working with the SCLC. He led a workshop at the SCLC national convention. Martin Luther King, Jr., was on the front row. The Nashville Christian Leadership Council (NCLC) was a pivotal civil rights organization founded in 1958 as a local affiliate of SCLC. The NCLC trained students in nonviolent resistance and spearheaded the historic Nashville sit-ins. At the first NCLC workshop, a Baptist college student attended. Lawson said that he and John Lewis connected that day and “it lasted forever.”

Even as he kept up with his seminary studies, Lawson gave much attention to the work of NCLC in addressing the racial segregation and discrimination of Nashville. The marches, protests, and sit-ins were covered and criticized by Nashville newspapers, especially the afternoon paper, The Nashville Banner, whose publisher was on the executive committee of Vanderbilt’s Board of Trust. The owner of a department store that was the site of sit-ins was also on the executive committee. Lawson was featured prominently in media coverage in spite of his best efforts to stay in the background.

Despite support from the seminary dean, Bob Nelson, and faculty, there were demands to the chancellor, Harvie Branscomb, to expel Lawson. Lawson considered leaving voluntarily, but his wife, Dorothy, and his colleague in Nashville Will Campbell opposed such action. The law school and medical school faculties joined the divinity faculty in demanding Lawson not be expelled. On March 3 of Lawson’s final seminary year, Branscomb came to the divinity school and announced Lawson’s expulsion as Lawson sat in the back of the room. Branscomb never spoke to Lawson directly. A dozen faculty resigned in protest.

Several seminaries reached out to Lawson to offer help in recognizing his Vanderbilt credits and, with some limited additional work, grant him his seminary degree. Lawson chose Boston University School of Theology where he did some independent course work and summer work. He chose Boston because of the connection to Martin Luther King, Jr. Lawson was especially pleased that one course was with King’s doctoral advisor, L. Harold DeWolf.

Harvie Branscomb

To understand Vanderbilt University of the 1950s, one needs to understand its founding ethos from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS), founded in 1844 after breaking with the northern Methodist Episcopal Church over slavery. The MECS wanted to start a major university and did so in 1873 with a million-dollar gift from Cornelius Vanderbilt. A generation later, the university and church severed official ties over governance disputes. Immediately the MECS vowed to respond by founding two new universities that became Emory University in Atlanta and Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Harvie Branscomb was an accomplished son of the MECS. His father and brother were MECS pastors. A Rhodes Scholar, he was a theologian who taught at SMU and was dean of Duke Divinity School before becoming chancellor at Vanderbilt in 1946. Known as a moderate on racial matters, it was his request to the Board of Trust that led to admission of the first Black students in the divinity and law schools.

Vanderbilt would later apologize to Lawson. In 1996, he received the first Distinguished Alumni Award from the Divinity School. In 2005, he was recognized as the Distinguished Alumnus of the University. He spoke and taught at Vanderbilt. And in 2022, Vanderbilt established the James Lawson Institute for study and research of nonviolent movements.

When Lawson returned to Vanderbilt in 1996, the divinity school dean, Joseph Hough, arranged a meeting between Lawson and Harvie Branscomb. They met at Branscomb’s home 36 years after Branscomb expelled Lawson. Branscomb was 101 years old. Lawson describes the meeting as pleasant with no animosity from either of them. Lawson always believed that if they could have talked in 1960, “we could have settled things without so much turmoil.” Branscomb had come to realize he was wrong in what he did and said he had moved beyond where he had been. “I let him know,” Lawson said, “that at no time did I harbor any ill will toward him, and that I never broke faith with him as a fellow United Methodist.”

Legacy

Jim Lawson will be remembered as long as the story of the Civil Rights Movement is told. Both Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Lewis declared that Lawson was the most important teacher of nonviolence for the movement from virtually its beginning. And he did all his masterful work from his position as a local church pastor who always saw his greatest title as “Reverend.”

He once gave a high compliment to the laity of the three congregations he served. He said that in all his years of doing civil rights work, he “did not remember a single Black person who jumped on me about my work in the movement.” I did not know Jim well. We served together on the General Board of Global Ministries and would get together after sessions for conversations I continue to value that deepened my understanding of the challenges we faced. Except for those occasions and times together at General Conferences, I mainly followed his work through the news. Although he died two years ago this month at the age of 95, his commitments to peace and justice will continue as new generations are inspired by his legacy of faith and nonviolence.

For More Information

Nonviolent: A Memoir of Resistance, Agitation, and Love by Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr. and Emily Yellin, Random House, 2026.

Jim Patterson, “The Heroic Life of the Rev. James Lawson,” United Methodist News Service, April 24, 2026.

“A Life Well Lived,” Today Show, NBC, June 16, 2024, YouTube (2:52)

“Remembering Civil Rights Icon Reverend James Lawson,” CBS News, Los Angeles, June 10, 2024, YouTube (3:40)

United Methodist Focus is the Substack blog of the Rev. Dr. Lovett H. Weems, Jr., distinguished professor of church leadership emeritus at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He came to Wesley in 2003 as the founding director of the Wesley’s Lewis Center for Church Leadership after eighteen years as president of Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. Previously he was a pastor in Mississippi for many years. He is the author of many books on church leadership that have had a broad appeal to a large constituency of leaders in both the public and private sectors.