Lee C Camp
[00:00:00] I'm Lee C. Camp and this is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
Rev. James Lawson
At age four, I tried to fight a four-year-old white neighbor boy who suddenly started spitting at me racist words.
Lee C Camp
This is Civil Rights leader, Reverend James Lawson.
Rev. James Lawson
My dad's position was that we had to defend ourselves, and my mother's position was, they can do it another way.
Lee C Camp
Today we talk with one who many see as the very conscience of the American Civil Rights Movement, one whom Dr. King called the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.
Rev. James Lawson
We started the public desegregation of the nation, and we did it without ever hating anybody.
Lee C Camp
All coming right [00:01:00] up.
I'm Lee C. Camp.. This is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
I am currently on a sabbatical from my day job as a professor of Theology and Ethics and at the beginning of my time off, I made a bucket list of potential guests for our show, people who have been heroes of mine in some way or the other, stellar exemplars of courageous pursuits of living a good life.
One at the top of the list was Reverend James Lawson, who many have seen as the heart and soul of the American Civil Rights Movement. He's now 94 years old, a beautiful and vigorous 94 years old. His mind's still ranging widely over what appears to be an encyclopedic memory. Before making my way to visit with him in person in Los Angeles, I combed through boxes and boxes of Reverend Lawson's papers, letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, telegrams, journals, [00:02:00] and more, all housed in the Vanderbilt University special collections here in Nashville. Then, we met in Los Angeles, in the parlor of the church he served in the last part of his career, Holman United Methodist Church. Normally I sit with a guest for an hour, 90 minutes at the most, and I was moved to get to sit with him at all.
And after almost two and a half hours, he was willing to keep going, but I thought I'd be greedy to go any longer. His stories were moving, intimate, and revealing, including his stories of his friendship with the one he simply calls Martin King, and along the way, he prefaced a number of things with the refrain, "No historians know this, and the books get this wrong".
He is, without any doubt in my mind, an insufficiently sung legend. All of us here at No Small Endeavor are deeply honored to share this conversation with Reverend James Lawson.
Reverend James Lawson is a [00:03:00] Methodist minister, seen by many as the teacher of many of the American Civil Rights activists, the very conscience of the movement itself. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once called him the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world. He was born the grandson and son of Methodist ministers. Reverend Lawson served 14 months in prison as a conscientious objector to the Korean conflict. After gaining parole, he served as a missionary in India. And then back in the States, when Dr. King met Lawson in 1955, he pleaded with him to come to the South. Lawson would respond to King's call and begin a lifetime's work of participation in the Civil Rights Movement, as well as serving Homan United Methodist Church in Los Angeles for 25 years, where we sit today in the parlor of the church.
Reverend Lawson, it's an honor to be with you today.
Rev. James Lawson
Lee C Camp
I once heard you, I think, in Nashville, speak of the influence that your mother had had on forming your thinking about nonviolence early on. Do I remember that correctly? [00:04:00]
Rev. James Lawson
Lee C Camp
Yeah. What was the-- what did that look like for you?
Rev. James Lawson
When I was four years old, my father was appointed to the St. James AME Zion Church in Massillon, Ohio. It is in that congregation that I clearly felt, along with my parents and my older sisters, who I was and that what I, my life was about. And as I've looked back, it was four years old when I sensed the call of God. At age four, I tried to fight a four-year-old white neighbor boy who suddenly started spitting at me racist words.
In family conversation, my dad's position was that we had to defend [00:05:00] ourselves, and my mother's position was, 'no Jacob, they can do it another way'. And I heard such conversations probably before I started school at age five. The whole family would be gathered around the supper table, for an example, or getting ready for supper. So, that table talk was in our house before I started school.
Lee C Camp
And then, did your mother once confront you after a fight you had later?
Rev. James Lawson
Yes. Yes. I am sure that my sisters and brothers and I all agreed we would not permit anyone to hurl racist remarks at us on the street. Or in the playground or school. That happened mostly in the public parks--
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
--where we all went to play. [laughs]
It [00:06:00] was a beautiful spring day, sun shining, just wonderful Ohio spring day. And my mother said, "Jimmy, I have a errand for you", 'cause I was the errand boy very often for my mother and father. So she gave me whatever it was I was to do. I ran out the back kitchen door. As I turned left onto Main Street, there was a car parked immediately close to the corner, and the windows wide open, and a youngster, I think it was a boy, but I don't remember, was in the front seat.
And I, as I turned the corner, he uh, stood up in the seat and put his whole shoulders outside the window and yelled at me a racist epithet, and I simply went over to him and smacked him and [00:07:00] went about my business. I ran on back home. And as I, uh, reported to my mother about the, uh, errand I-- for some reason, and sat in a favorite chair by the back door in the kitchen while she was hunched over the stove, cooking supper, no doubt, to my left. And I talked to her about my day and one of the things I reported was hitting this child in the car. And my mother, without turning towards me, the first thing she said to me as I relayed this incident, was, "Jimmy, what good did that do?"
And then she went into what I've later called a long soliloquy, on who we were, what we were about [00:08:00] as a family, and about our worship of God, and our participation at the St. James AME Zion congregation, and our religion, and Jesus - that meant we could not be injured by this misbehavior, of being called something racist. And she ended up by saying, "there must be a better way".
That incident was a continuously transforming incident for me. It became a numinous experience for me, because I heard [00:09:00] a voice, which came from what it seemed to me, a deep place in space, and then gradually I felt that it was coming from inside me, but from outside me, but it was coming to me and it was a voice deep within. That voice said, "Number one, you will never again fight anybody physically".
And what was most important in that conversation, then, was, that you'll never fight on the playground anymore, who are playing tackle football or basketball or any other sport. 'Cause I, we were all deep into sports. I heard her voice continuing as that issue came to me. And then secondly, as she was talking, I heard the same voice saying, "and you will [00:10:00] find the better way".
Now this is fourth grade. And so, from then on, I never slapped or threw my fist at somebody or tackled anybody in anger over any kind of a epithet, and not over a racist epithet. So actually my, my understanding of nonviolence began, at least, there.
Lee C Camp
So then, in your college days, I understand you began to read Gandhi, Tolstoy, and you're also grappling with the question of nonviolence and thinking about scripture, and thinking about your faith.
Rev. James Lawson
Well, some of the, some of the scriptures I'd had worked out well. I already really recognized that Jesus was not somebody condoning violence of any kind or hatred of any kind of, 'cause I was reading the New [00:11:00] T-- the Bible and, uh, before school even. It is in my first year in college in 1947 that the history department brought in A.J. Muste, the executive director of the F.O.R. for a lecture.
Lee C Camp
The F.O.R. Is the Fellowship of Reconciliation, founded in 1915 by 68 pacifists, perhaps one of the largest, oldest interfaith peace and justice organizations in the United States. Lawson would subsequently serve in the F.O.R. and be involved in its work for many years.
Rev. James Lawson
Muste did talk about pacifism and nonviolence and Gandhi, and that's-- he's the one, therefore, that introduced me clearly to the-- Gandhi, and I went to the library and began to read every book I [00:12:00] could find on Gandhi.
Lee C Camp
Huh. And then you're also, during this time, if I remember correctly, trying to discern what you would do in the face of the draft, and may-- maybe are, are you talking to, uh, your local draft board?
Rev. James Lawson
Our Selective Service Act required every 18-year-old boy to register, so I registered that September. But I indicated that I didn't know if I was doing the right thing - that I was shaping and forming my life around the call of God in Jesus, and that I hadn't really made up my mind where that process wanted me to operate.
So I was registering, but could not know what direction the prayer life and the meditation and the reading would take [00:13:00] me.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
'47, I enter college. I've registered, and then I sent my draft cards back. I have come to the conclusion that, like Jim Crow law, which I've refused to obey, Selective Service law was the second unjust law–
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
--which I could not obey.
Lee C Camp
If you check out the unabridged podcast version of this episode, you can get the full story here. But let me summarize. Lawson could have gotten out of the draft for the Korean War in three different ways. He could have gotten an exemption as a student, as a student in pre ministerial training, and as a conscientious objector. But he had come to the conclusion that the draft itself was unjust, as unjust as Jim Crow laws. So rather than [00:14:00] take the easy way out through one of the exemptions, he told his draft board that he was a draft resistor. And then, he didn't flee the country. He just told them that he would not be showing up for the draft, because of his conscience.
And then, he went on about his life as a student until the FBI showed up to arrest him. He was tried. He was found guilty.
You're sentenced to, I think, 36 months in federal prison.
Rev. James Lawson
That's right. Three years. I was given a three year sentence. And I spent my first night in jail, or somewhere, in Dayton, Ohio and ended up at Mill Point, West Virginia, which is a federal prison.
Lee C Camp
I remember, I, I read in some of your papers, some of your diaries from your-- you're there, what, 13, 14 months in the, in the prison. And [00:15:00] one thing that particularly caught my attention - you were what, 23 years old at this time, or, quite young.
Rev. James Lawson
Lee C Camp
Okay. So I was struck by, here you are in prison, and in your diary there's a, an element of this sort of deep sense of, you're not so sure yet, that you've surrendered yourself to God.
And this sort of sense of, maybe I've failed God, or maybe I haven't found the path yet. And yet at the same time here, you have enough confidence to have done what you've done, to resist the draft and end up in prison. But do you remember that, kind of, sense of inner struggle that you had?
Rev. James Lawson
Lee C Camp
What was that, what was that like for you? Would you talk about that a little bit?
Rev. James Lawson
Well, now, you need to understand, in the Christian, uh, Bible, hearing a call from God [00:16:00] through Jesus, 'follow me', that is a highly inside piece of work. And, I've always recognized my flaws as a human being. Dorothy Lawson may tell you I don't recognize some of them, [both laugh] but, but, uh, I've tried to recognize my flaws and to not pretend about it.
So a journey like that, which is a transformative process, from my perspective simply tries to pre prevent pretending that you've achieved. [laughs] You're, you're on a journey, and you continue to be on a journey. And maybe that journey never ends.[00:17:00]
Lee C Camp
When you think back to those 13, 14 months in prison, from this perspective now, late in your life, what did that experience mean for you, in your development as a human being?
Rev. James Lawson
In many ways, I lost my fear of persecution.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
I lost my fear of getting hurt, in the struggles, in just any number of ways. I learned the inward confidence of seeking to follow the true and the beautiful and the righteous, but as I put it back then all the time, and still continue to put it-- that mantra ahead.
I learned the benefits of seeking to follow Jesus, [00:18:00] uh, so that at 94 there is a, kind of a profound sense of living in the presence of the eternal and a pro-- profound sense of responsibility to continue to love and care about life and care about people, and to resist. I oft-- more often put it nowadays, that I must resist the spiritual forces of wickedness, which, in the United States I teach is the inside and the outside of racism, sexism, violence, and plantation capitalism.
I've come to --clusion that these are the four major principalities that the Bible talks of, that I know to be exactly that. [00:19:00] They hurt the United States bitterly and United States does not recognize it. And because they've been spread by Western civilization, they hurt the world.
Lee C Camp
You're listening to No Small Endeavor and our conversation with the Civil Rights leader, James Lawson. I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com. You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen.
These notes include links to resources mentioned in this episode and a PDF of my complete interview notes, including material not found in this episode, as well as a transcript. In our podcast, we'll be releasing two versions of this interview [00:20:00] with Reverend James Lawson - the broadcast version, which you're listening to now, and an unabridged version, which has the full riches of those 2+ hours I sat with Reverend Lawson on a beautiful day in Southern California.
Coming up, Reverend James Lawson and I discuss his travels to India, his appointment as Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the South, and meeting the Little Rock Nine.
So, you're paroled, and then spend some time in-- as a missionary in India, I presume in India you continue to learn about Gandhi?
Rev. James Lawson
Yes. I mean, that's what excited me, because then when I went to India, I had the privilege of meeting a number of the folk in the independence movement.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
This is 1953, when I arrived [00:21:00] there. I had the privilege of meeting Gandhi's right hand man, uh, Jawaharlal Nehru. I also had conversations with a number of Christians who were in the movement, in the Independence Movement and made it my point to visit with them. I visited a couple of Gandhi's ashrams, especially one outside of Nagpur in, uh, Wardha.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
So, India was a terrific choice for me.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
I have on my desk today a book that I continue to review, by Gandhi, that I bought in India.
Lee C Camp
And then, it's there that you hear about the, the movement--
Rev. James Lawson
Lee C Camp
--beginning with Martin Luther King?
Rev. James Lawson
By the time of 1952, I graduated after prison, I was not thinking, didn't teach it in university, anything like that. I was strictly aiming at the pastorate [00:22:00] and, uh, dealing with racism. So, by 1952 I was convinced, out of my Gandhi studies, that we black folk could have a massive movement of nonviolence that would shake and change the nation.
Lee C Camp
And so how did you discover about what was happening in the States when you were in India?
Rev. James Lawson
I subscribed to a number of magazines, that got there late--
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
--came by ship. But I read Newsweek Magazine, Progressive Magazine, I read Nation Magazine, I think I read Christian Century, in India. They all got there six weeks late.
[Lee laughs]
But, that's how I kept up.
Lee C Camp
Yeah, yeah. Any, any particular memory of, of what it was like when you first heard that the movement was starting in the States?
Rev. James Lawson
Yes. I, I was elated. [00:23:00] I hollered and jumped, danced around my desk. [both laugh]
I was, I was so-- uh, that's one of my days that I will never forget. My next door apartment neighbor was a biologist by the name of Christopher Theopolous [sp?].
Chris came running out of his house, and knocked on my door to ask me what in the world was going on.
[Lee laughs]
And I told him, you know, I, I've been expecting this to happen. When I go back home, I will be in that struggle.
Lee C Camp
Yeah.
So, you come back to the States, and I think you're, perhaps, back in the Midwest.
Rev. James Lawson
In Ohio. Go back to Ohio and start my graduate work at Oberlin.
Lee C Camp
In time, you're, you're [00:24:00] invited to come to the South to, to begin working in the movement there.
Rev. James Lawson
My going to Nashville was not because I was recruited. It was because I had committed myself to, as soon as possible, get into the South to work with Martin King and the movement.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
I did that before King happened.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
I was going to go to Atlanta, but when A.J. Muste-- when I called A.J. and told A.J., "I'm dropping outta school to go south, I'm gonna move to Atlanta", he said to me, "Make no plans about the South until we have talked again, until I called you back".
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
So when he calls me back, he said, "Why don't you become [00:25:00] secretary of F.O.R. for our southern region?"
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
And of course, I'm self-financing myself.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
I, I, you know, [laughs] I know that's God's will.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
I know that's providential that I can move south with the job.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
But my first big operation as southern secretary was in Little Rock.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
Yeah. It's left out of the story.
Lee C Camp
Yeah. So what happened in Little Rock?
Rev. James Lawson
Glenn Smiley is our field director - he meets me in Nashville, he has arranged an apartment for me, and he has arranged an early schedule. So January and February, I'm traveling with, with Glenn and his wife, at places where they have worked, where [00:26:00] he has worked, where there are F.O.R. members, there is a need for non-violent education and counseling.
So the first place we go to is Little Rock. My first day in Little Rock, I meet all nine of the Little Rock students in the living room of Daisy Bates, who was the chairman of the NAACP state chapter. Glenn and I are together. We sit with those nine students, which have been arranged by local people - F.O.R. members at the School of Medicine arranged it.
I asked them, right off, what is going on, what are you experiencing? They are experiencing the full assault of the governor, the White Citizens Council, and approximately a hundred white [00:27:00] students. The names, that the NAACP has locally, they've kept the name-- all the people who did harassment, they named them and reported it to the Southern Court. [laughs]
I asked them, what are your experience? - they tell us at length. How are you handling it? They said, the lawyers, and the NAACP, and our parents tell us we may not fight back. And there is some anger in me that that happens, that that's what's going on. And I then eat all my anger up inside and I say to them, what they actually mean is, you are not to fight back like you are being attacked.
You are not to hate--
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
--as your enemies in the school [00:28:00] and the governor hate you. I said, you ought to fight back with character. And then Glenn and I introduce them to non-violence.
And they're all baptized people.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
So we can use Jesus as the model.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
And one of the very exciting stories that came outta LA for me was, I asked them what was the worst thing happening to them, and a couple of the girls immediately popped up and saying, uh, the bombing.
And I said, well, what is that? They said, well, almost always a boy will take a piece of silver or a piece of white paper, and they will wrap it in a marble, or a small stone, and then they will hurl that at us in class.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
And [00:29:00] it really hurts when it hits.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
So I said, well, what can you do about bombing?
You can't stop them from bombing you, and you can't go after them for bombing you. You know that. So what are some of the possibilities? And so we walked around that bombing.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
It was in that first week, and I think it was Carlotta Walls, but I'm not sure about who it was - one of the nine - who said that when she went to her eight o'clock class the next morning, as she entered the room, a bomb went past her head, missing her, hit the wall, and fell to the floor. And she said that she looked at it. She was very aware where it [00:30:00] came from - the boy towards the back of the room. And she thought about it, and she said, 'with my knees trembling, I stoop down, I pick it up, and I walk back to the boy who threw it, and I put it on his desk and stared at him and smiled at him.'
She said he turned all kinds of colors.
[Lee laughs]
Then she said, the next morning he was at the door when she entered, and he said 'good morning'. He never again harassed any of us.
Lee C Camp
Huh. What a beautiful story.[00:31:00]
In our podcast, we'll be releasing two versions of this interview with Reverend Lawson - the broadcast version, which you're listening to now, and an unabridged version, which has the full riches of those 2+ hours I sat with Reverend Lawson there in the parlor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles.
We're going to take a short break now, but coming right up, we'll discuss Reverend Lawson's time with Martin Luther King Jr. on the day he was assassinated in Memphis, as well as some tools that have helped Reverend Lawson on his own road in seeking to live a good life.
We pick back up here discussing Reverend Lawson's leadership in the Nashville city movement, which sought to desegregate lunch counters and became a model for desegregating business districts throughout the United States. [00:32:00]
So when you began to send out groups of students to do the sit-in, I've, I, I've wondered what sorts of levels of anxiety are you dealing with personally as you are watching these young people that you've trained go out into these hostile situations?
Rev. James Lawson
I think the major anxiety they had was, will it work? They knew about the possibility they would be hit, could get hurt. But one of the big gains of the nation was, we showed the nation that democracy can make changes without firing a shot.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
Without killing anybody, without beating up on anybody.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
Because the great task from Nashville is that we started the public desegregation of the nation, [00:33:00] and we did it without hating anybody.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
[Laughs]
We bombed no store, we killed no police officer.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
We chased no white boy down the street.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
[Both laugh]
And that's not, that's almost not written anywhere.
Lee C Camp
You moved to Memphis in what year?
Rev. James Lawson
Lee C Camp
Okay. And then, you are organizing the sanitation workers' action in 1968?
Rev. James Lawson
I am helping the sanitation workers, after they go on strike. They go on strike in February [00:34:00] of '68, and Centenary United Methodist Church and I, uh, are supporting them from day one.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
They have no strike fund, so we began the process of raising a special offering every week that we put into the strike fund, for the first month or so maybe, but the union comes in and sends the strike fund major donation from the international funds.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
But initially, congregations and preachers help - and community - raise money.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
The Labor Committee of the city council declares that it will negotiate, and do a letter of recognition to the union with a dues write off. As I [00:35:00] remember, we hear the letter read, we meet with them at the convention center, they call for a motion and they agree, that the letter will be refer-- referred to the mayor for his signature, that the city council cannot properly do it, that the mayor has to sign it anyway. So, that's their rationale.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
But, of course, the mayor is the one who says, you know, 'you can't administer this, I'm the mayor.' Well, of course, they have made a promise, and the seven or eight hundred or a thousand men, with their families in some cases, begin to shout and yell, scream, and, uh, we manage to get [00:36:00] order in-- from the stage.
Uh, I call Frank Holloman, who is the new, ex-FBI man, who is the commissioner of Fire and Police, and say to him, we're gonna peacefully walk down the main street to Mason Temple for a community meeting with the union. He agrees. And the net result is, then we bring 800 or so public works, uh, employees out on the intersection and proceed to line them up, to march onto Mason Temple. I am in front of one of the major department stores. The march is going well. It is peaceful.
Police cars roll out of the side [00:37:00] streets. Each car has four white officers in it. They drive up right next to the march, about five or six police cars back. That car is apparently designated to be the antagonist, 'cause that car keeps turning in on the workers. Before we know it, that car has done its job. Workers put their hands in the car, the white officers pour out of the cars instantly with cans of mace and they mace us all. Some people like myself got more macing than others, but some workers got it, some preachers got it. Uh, I had glasses on, so my macing was not as bad as they hoped, although I got it in [00:38:00] my ears and a little rolled into my eyes. But otherwise, I did not lose the use of my eyes. As that happened, I shouted out, 'let us go to Mason Temple anyway, and we'll still have our meeting'.
And word got out, and as we arrived there, I walked the whole distance with the escort of police officers, one of whom walked right in front of me and kept on the side of me and kept trying to show how mad he was at me. [laughs]
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
--but he kept looking at me as though he wanted to do it. And so there, there at Mason Temple we, uh, united, and people were pouring in from all over the city.
One of the pastors presided. The group decided, number one, the [00:39:00] community was going to back the strike fully.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
They named several of us to a strategy committee. Later on, Harold Middlebrooks, one of our fine pastors, just outside the city, called me to say that, 'the meeting told me to call you and tell you, you are to call the meeting together and make the plans and do the work.'
So that's how that organized.
Lee C Camp
When the time was right, Reverend Lawson called Dr. King and asked him to come to Memphis. He arrived April 3, 1968. That afternoon brought a thunderstorm, a Memphis deluge, so great that Dr. King considered not going to the Bishop Charles Mason Temple where the mass meeting [00:40:00] was scheduled, thinking no one would be there.
Upon realizing that hundreds, thousands had already arrived, he made his way to the venue. In his speech that night, which some have described as especially emotional, he recounted his life and laborers in the movement, how grateful he was for the work he'd been given to do.
Near the end of the speech, he told of the occasion he had been stabbed and nearly died. The tip of the knife had come so close to his aorta that the New York Times reported that if he had merely sneezed, he would've died.
Dr. King then recounted how a young girl, a ninth grade student, a little white girl, had written him a letter to tell him that she was just so happy that he did not sneeze. And he recounted how happy he was too, that he had not sneezed, for it would've kept him from seeing the wonders in Nashville, Birmingham, Albany, Selma, Washington [00:41:00] DC, and he wouldn't have been there that night in Memphis.
And then he closed, referring to the rumors and threats that were out and about, but that he didn't really care, because he said, 'I've been to the mountaintop'. He said he wouldn't mind living a long life - longevity has its place, he said. But he knew that he might not get that, and he just wanted to do God's will. And that he was not afraid, not fearing any man, that his eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
And exhausted at the end of the speech, it was as if he fell back into the arms of his friends. Less than 24 hours later, Dr. King was assassinated, standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel there in Memphis.
When you think [00:42:00] back to Dr. King's assassination there in Memphis, what, what are memories that stand out for you in that 24 hour period?
Rev. James Lawson
April the 4th, 1968? I have to tell you that my friend Martin and I were very much like each other. We had read the same books at Morehouse, Baldwin Wallace, and Boston - we had some of the same people teach us at Boston, when I finished up at Boston. We were third generation pastors. Martin and I simply clicked. And part of the reason we clicked is that by 1952, I knew we were gonna have a movement. I did not know who was going to emerge, but I saw, as whoever was [00:43:00] going to emerge was going to be my Moses, and that's the word I used to myself–
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
--in India, and before, and after. So, I'm doing a memoir. I do not know how many times King and I conferred by phone. I do not know how many times King and I took walks, at Penn Center or in Georgia at our staff retreats, our board retreats - when he and I would take walks for the purpose of talking, and his, in large measure, sharing with me where he thought things were, and wanting me to bounce against it so that he could feel, uh, that he was moving in the right direction.
I can't tell you how often that happened. [00:44:00]
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
When the sanitation strike began, I canceled going to see him in Miami, where he had called and wanted me to do some non-violent lectures for preachers he had brought in, to try to help them understand non-violent struggle. I canceled and told him that we're gonna run the strike like a non-violent movement, and that he would be getting word from me because I would want him to come into a mass meeting. We were in court April the 4th, so I was somewhat upset because I had to be a witness in the case against SCLC being in Memphis that morning. And, uh, Martin insisted that Andrew Young and I, who would be the witnesses in the federal court, [00:45:00] would come by before we went to court.
We talked in the-- in that morning, and when the-- I asked for the court to let me go, it was after lunch, around two o'clock or so. I then went back to where King was at the motel and visited with him about the movement until maybe five o'clock, and then went to the strike office to see what things I had to do for the next steps.
Then landed at home around six o'clock because Dorothy and I had a discipline that I would always be home at six o'clock, no matter what was going on, and we would have supper around the [00:46:00] table with, by that time, three sons.
And so, um, a little before six, I was walking into the kitchen, greeting her, and then heard in an-- from an alcove, the TV interrupted by announcement that King had been shot.
So that tells you my history, a piece of it that day. But I spent probably close to four hours with King at the motel before the court opened, and then spent probably close to the same amount of time, or more, with King after I left court.[00:47:00]
Lee C Camp
In your papers, there were, I don't know how many telegrams from all over the country, the world, to you, expressing solidarity with you and sympathy to you.
Rev. James Lawson
Lee C Camp
And letters expressing grief, some expressing shame. There was, um, one telegram from the Lawyer's Constitutional Defense Committee of the ACLU–
Rev. James Lawson
Lee C Camp
–that they had sent identical wires to the White House, SCLC, Andrew Young, and, and to you - you, you had a copy of it - and, I was struck by the language of, of pain and, and anger in the-- in this telegram, particularly. It said, 'His death leaves us despairing, all but paralyzed with anger and [00:48:00] bitterness at a society that destroys its best sons.'
And I wonder, for you, being such good friends, did you have to process despair, or what was your own experience of anger or grief like during that time?
Rev. James Lawson
You have to understand that, that I am a man of the Spirit, I'm a man of the scriptures, I'm a man who tries to follow Jesus, so that while I experienced grief, very rarely ever have experienced despair.
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
I've had more a sense of despair even today, from the sixties, because my country assassinated five of its finest young men. [00:49:00] A president, a senator, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Martin King. That is the great issue, because forces of spiritual wickedness in United States assassinated people in order to keep the country from doing what the country should have done.
Those forces are still alive. I do not just have grief for Martin. I continue to grieve, because the major handicap of the assassinations of the sixties is very simple from my point of view. Number one, those assassinations killed the process of transformation that [00:50:00] meant that Malcolm X was about to join with King.
[laughs]
Lee C Camp
Rev. James Lawson
And secondly, stopped the emergence of a movement that would've transformed the United States. It did some transformation anyway, but didn't do all that it could have done and would've done.
Lee C Camp
As we get close to finishing up, I, I wonder if you could share a little bit about what sorts of disciplines, to use a word you used earlier, have continued to help you stay the course.
What is it for you that has kind of helped you try to practice a vision of life that you have felt called to ever since you were that four-year-old?
Rev. James Lawson
Well, the, the scriptures have been my, primary book for, uh, the inward life, [00:51:00] and Jesus of Nazareth has been my primary figure. In the Exodus, the first written account we have of civil disobedience, the first written account that we have of what was probably a essentially non-violent movement, of the escape of slaves from Egypt to the Promised Land, are two of the several places that I know about that have informed me over the years.
Then of, of course, my primary mantra is still, follow Jesus. And in my reflection and prayers and Bible reading and practice of the presence [00:52:00] that goes on now, there is a centrality to the role of the spirit of Jesus as the highest possible form of religion that the human race knows everyth-- anything about. And then, there is a quiet in-house confidence in the work I have done. What people who call me a civil rights worker do not know is, that I, at a very early age, knew I was to be a pastor. As early as junior high school, the seventh grade, I realized I was on my way towards being a pastor. In high school, I was convinced I would be a pastor. So it's as a pastor I have worked, [00:53:00] and, uh, many people don't-- are not aware of the fact that I pastored three congregations, and they give me, today, quiet joy in what, uh, I was-- how I was able to live, what I was able to do.
How I was able to participate in the lives of all kinds of people from that position of a pastor.
Lee C Camp
We've been talking to Reverend James Lawson here at, uh, Holman United Methodist Church, which he served for many years, in the parlor. And Reverend Lawson, we thank you for your generosity with your time, and we thank you for the beautiful example of your life, and for your sharing with us today.
Rev. James Lawson
Thank you very much wanting to do this and I'm pleased I was-- I'm able to do it.[00:54:00]
Lee C Camp
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor, and our interview with Reverend James Lawson. You can find an unabridged version of this episode on our podcast feed. In a section that ended up on the cutting room floor, he tells a story of sharing a jail cell with actor Martin Sheen in the eighties. We have an upcoming episode with Mr. Sheen in which he remembers that time fondly. So please make sure you check out the unabridged version of this interview and look for that upcoming episode with Martin Sheen.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion, and the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.
Alright, thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible. Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom Anderson, Kate Hays, Cariad Harmon, [00:55:00] and Tim Lauer. And special thanks to Molly Dorman at Vanderbilt University Special Collections and to the kind folks at Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles for their gracious hospitality.
Thanks for listening, and let's keep exploring together what it means to live a good life. No Small Endeavor is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.