Opinion: James Lawson and the enduring lessons of nonviolence

James M. Lawson Jr., shown in 2015, changed history with his commitment to nonviolence and justice in the civil rights movement. James M. Lawson Jr., who died last week, was a legendary hero of the civil rights movement; the pastor, for 25 years, of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles; and, in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ words, “a man who changed history.” But to me, Jim Lawson was, first and foremost, an incredible teacher. Take the time we were preparing for a show we had roughly titled, “What happened to the civil rights movement?” Jim said: “Don’t call it that.” I was confused. He cited the goal of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was to “save the soul of America.” The boycotts, sit-ins and freedom rides targeted segregation and voting rights, but in Jim’s view, their deeper purpose was to challenge the kind of toxic thinking that devalued human beings to the point that genocide, enslavement and, later, Jim Crow laws were possible. He maintained that the unrest we witness in America was evidence of the “poisons of racism, sexism, violence and plantation capitalism.” Yet when white supremacists publicly showed their faces, and polls indicated that people were discouraged about race relations, he speculated that out of the tumult, “perhaps we are actually witnessing the unraveling of American apartheid.” He cautioned that it would be a “messy affair” because too few in leadership seemed ready to make a change.