The Brief

Reverend James M. Lawson Jr., civil rights activist and former longtime pastor of L.A.’s Holman United Methodist Church, has died.

Lawson died Sunday, according to his family. He was 95 years old.

Lawson was best known for teaching nonviolent resistance and training leaders of the civil rights movement, even being referred to as the “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1974, Lawson was active in the labor movement and led his congregation in the West Adams neighborhood for 25 years.

He was involved with California State University, Northridge’s Civil Discourse & Social Change initiative and taught labor studies at UCLA, with the university naming a building near MacArthur Park in his honor in 2021. He was also awarded the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor, in 2018.

Kent Wong, former UCLA Labor Center director who co-taught a nonviolence course with Lawson for more than 20 years, remembered him as a mentor and friend.

“Rev. Lawson was an extraordinary visionary leader who introduced the philosophy of nonviolence to a new generation of Los Angeles labor and civil rights leaders,” Wong said in a statement. "Our deepest condolences go out to his family. Let us all continue to carry on his memory and legacy.”

A stretch of Adams Boulevard, from Crenshaw Boulevard to the Holman United Methodist Church, was renamed the Reverend James M. Lawson Mile earlier this year.

The UCLA Labor Center and UCLA Labor Studies will be organizing events to honor Lawson’s life and legacy, but the church doesn’t have any public memorial events planned at this time, LAist has confirmed. 

Remembering the reverend 

Bernice King, CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and the youngest child of the civil rights leader, said Lawson embodied lyrics from Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes — “the world won’t get no better if we just let it be.” 

“He was a courageous nonviolent strategist who taught many to meet injustice with what my father called ‘soul force,’” King wrote on X.

Connie Rice, civil rights activist and lawyer who represented Lawson in the 1991 class action lawsuit against the LAPD over its misuse of attack dogs on Black and Latino people, told AirTalk Tuesday that we’ve lost a giant in our backyard who led the Civil Rights Revolution for Black Liberation. 

“He wasn't just the domo general of tactics and ran the boot camps for the very specific strategies and tactics that nonviolent resistance, nonviolent disruption, and nonviolent disobedience require — and each requires training,” Rice said. “They were the warriors of morality, and the warriors for human dignity, and they ended apartheid in this country with a moral war, and you can't do a moral war with violence.”

Lawson studied satyagraha, Mahatma Ghandi’s principles of nonviolent resistance, while working as a preacher in India. Rice said the people like Lawson, those who were willing to put their lives and freedom on the line for the concept “of being a warrior for peace through nonviolent morality,” is one of the highest levels of human consciousness and activity.

“There are very few people I can listen to about religion,” Rice said. “But when you see people who don't just walk the walk and talk the talk, they live the life and they're willing to die the death, that's when you've really got something. And that's what James Lawson was.”

Rice said Lawson joins Martin Luther King, Jr. and Thurgood Marshall in the pantheon of warriors for Black Liberation. But the fight continues.

“So remember James Lawson, because he's the wind beneath our wings as we continue the battles for human dignity and human freedom and human prosperity — the highest form of human morality,” she said.

Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that Los Angeles joins the country, and world, in mourning Lawson, whose leadership and teachings crippled centuries of systematic racism and injustice. 

“Reverend Lawson was also an invaluable mentor to me – I continued seeking his counsel throughout my time as an organizer, an activist and as an elected official,” Bass said in a statement. “He was there for me as I know he was there for countless civic and faith leaders here in Los Angeles who were guided and influenced by his teachings … His teachings now live on in each of us as we continue to push the needle on social and economic justice.”

Councilmember Heather Hutt, whose district includes the Holman United Methodist Church, said in a statement that she’s deeply saddened to hear of Lawson's death, but she knows his legacy will continue to guide generations to come.

“Reverend James Morris Lawson was a leader of our community and world, whose messages of love and nonviolence left an indelible mark on the Civil Rights Movement and influenced many,” Hutt said in a statement. “His message of love will forever live on in every heart he touched. May he rest in power.”

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 36, which covers more than 68 unions across Southern California, wrote that Lawson “dedicated his life to racial & economic justice & brought about great change with his actions & teachings” on X.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez remembered the first time he met Lawson more than 15 years ago at a nonviolent civil disobedience workshop.

“Those conversations with Rev. Lawson forced me to reimagine the way I saw the world & they quite literally changed the course of my life,” he wrote on X. 

State Assemblymember Mike A. Gipson, who’s 65th district includes Compton and Wilmington, remembered Lawson as a civil rights legend who mentored activists, marched in Memphis with Dr. King, and as a leader in the “Good Trouble” of his era.

“Yet as sad as I feel to lose an icon, I am in awe of such an accomplished life,” Gipson said in a statement. “It leaves a legacy including the nonviolence work of the James Lawson Institute, an immense body of writings published during his time in California, and the many ways that our community champions the cause of others' freedom to this day. May he rest in peace.”

Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones, a member of the “Tennessee Three” who was expelled for participating in a gun control protest last year, wrote that the world has lost a powerful life force and mentor to so many.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting agreed Monday to fulfill a $36 million, multi-year contract with NPR that it had yanked after pressure from the Trump White House.

The arrangement resolves litigation filed by NPR accusing the corporation of illegally yielding to Trump's demands that the network be financially punished for its news coverage. The argument, part of a broader lawsuit by NPR and several stations against the Trump administration, focused on CPB funding for NPR's operation of a satellite distribution system for local public radio stations. NPR announced Monday it would waive all fees for the stations associated with the satellite service.

The judge in the case had explicitly told CPB's legal team he did not find its defense credible. CPB lawyers had argued that the decision to award the contract to a new consortium of public media institutions was driven by a desire to foster digital innovations more swiftly.

"The settlement is a victory for editorial independence and a step toward upholding the First Amendment rights of NPR and the public media system in our legal challenge to [Trump's] Executive Order," Katherine Maher, President and CEO of NPR, said in a statement. "While we entered into this dispute with CPB reluctantly, we're glad to resolve it in a way that enables us to continue to provide for the stability of the Public Radio Satellite System, offer immediate and direct support to public radio stations across the country, and proceed with our strong and substantive claims against this illegal and unconstitutional Executive Order. We look forward to our day in court in December."

In its submission Monday evening to the court, CPB did not concede that it had acted wrongfully — nor that it had yielded to political pressure from the administration.

Instead, in a statement posted on its website, CPB asserted its side "prevails" as a result of the settlement.

"This is an important moment for public media," said Patricia Harrison, President and CEO of CPB. "We are very pleased that this costly and unnecessary litigation is over, and that our investment in the future through [Public Media Infrastructure] marks an exciting new era for public media." CPB had awarded a rival contract to PMI, a newly created consortium of public radio organizations including several major stations, to ensure the digital distribution system functions properly. That contract will continue, CPB said.

Federal subsidies for public broadcasting stopped on Oct. 1 as a result of a party-line vote over the summer by Congress, called a rescission. Only a skeleton crew remains at CPB, which was created as a nonprofit corporation more than a half-century ago to funnel federal subsidies to public media. While PBS has had layoffs and NPR is monitoring its own finances, many local stations across the country have been hit hard.

Over the course of the litigation this fall, mounting evidence appeared to demonstrate that CPB's board chair and executives had acted against NPR in what turned out to be a futile attempt to salvage the corporation's own future.

In hearings last month in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss told CPB's legal team they had not made a credible case for why the corporation reneged on the contract just a day after a top White House official warned senior CPB leaders against doing business with NPR. A trial had been set to start on Dec. 1.

CPB's change of mind — and NPR's ensuing lawsuit — sparked consternation and unease within the larger public media ecosystem. The two organizations had served as partners for decades. But that relationship frayed earlier this year, as the system came under attack from the Trump administration.

Trump's public campaign against NPR and PBS started in earnest soon after he returned to the White House. Trump kicked it into high gear in late March with a series of social media posts.

In early April, CPB leaders sought to get money out the door before Trump took action against public media. On April 2, CPB's board approved the extension of a contract with NPR to distribute public radio programs, including those not produced by NPR. The arrangement stretched back four decades. The amount included millions still due on the then-current contract.

The next day, CPB's board chair and two senior executives met with a top White House budget official who attested to her "intense dislike for NPR." The budget official told them CPB didn't have to "throw the baby out with the bathwater," according to a deposition from CPB executive Clayton Barsoum submitted as part of NPR's legal filings.

And the day after that — just 48 hours after that board vote — CPB reversed itself. CPB executive Kathy Merritt informed NPR's top official over the satellite and distribution service that it had to be spun off: it could not be part of NPR. NPR refused to do so. CPB revised the scope of the contract and solicited new bids. NPR's submission proved unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, the White House was ramping up the pressure. It accused NPR and PBS of bias. On April 14, for example, it issued a formal statement that called their offerings "radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news'." NPR and PBS's chief executives have rejected the accusations of bias.

On May 1, Trump issued an executive order that no federal money should go to the two public broadcasting networks. NPR and three Colorado public radio stations then filed suit against the White House, saying they were being unlawfully punished because the president did not like their news coverage. They contended the executive order represented a violation of First Amendment protections. Their suit names CPB as a defendant as well for, in their characterization, bending to the president's will. In Monday's legal filing, CPB agreed that the executive order was precisely the sort of government interference that Congress sought to prevent in establishing CPB as it did.

In the summer, Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress, urged on by Trump, pulled back all $1.1 billion for future public broadcasting that had already been approved and signed into law by the president.

Throughout the legal battle, NPR has said, regardless of the outcome of the case, it would work with Public Media Infrastructure.

NPR's broader constitutional case against Trump's executive order purporting to ban federal funding of public media continues. A hearing on its merits is scheduled for December.

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. It was edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editors Gerry Holmes and Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
Copyright 2025 NPR

A long-awaited vision for Huntington Drive is finally coming into focus. In the future, the busy corridor will have dedicated bus lanes, protected bike lanes, two lanes of vehicle traffic in each direction, a thin median and wide sidewalks.

This was the plan chosen by the City for the Huntington Drive Multi-Modal Transportation Improvement Project, which runs on an approximately four-mile stretch of the street between North Mission Road near LAC+USC Medical Center and Alhambra/South Pasadena. This had much more public support than the competing alternative, which featured a wide median rather than wide sidewalks, according to Mary Nemick, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Engineering.

Nemick said the next step is to hire a consultant to create design and engineering documents. This phase is expected to take about two years before groundbreaking can occur.

Currently, Huntington Drive has three vehicular lanes in each direction, the bike lanes are unprotected, and about 25% of the corridor lacks sidewalks. Though pedestrians and bicyclists account for only 1% of peak-hour trips, they account for 54% of severe or fatal injuries from traffic collisions, according to a project document.

The design budget is about $10.5 million, Nemick said, and the overall project cost will be determined after designs are completed.

The project is being funded by some of the money previously allocated for the construction of the 710 Freeway extension, which was abandoned in 2018 after decades of local opposition.

The Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday for a roughly 40,000-square-foot expansion that will include indoor and outdoor science learning areas and space for special exhibits.

The centerpiece of the buildout will include an interactive display of the Inspiration space shuttle mockup, where visitors can go inside the cargo bay.

Built in 1972, the 35-foot-tall model made of wood, plastic and aluminum functioned as a prototype and fitting tool for all of the orbiters that launched into space.

“We’re super excited to be able to put it on display for the public, really for the first time in forever,” Ben Dickow, president and executive director of the Columbia Memorial Space Center, told LAist.

The expansion will also allow for educational areas, where students can learn about the pioneering engineering and design work that went into building the model at Rockwell International in Downey.

The backstory

Last fall, after sitting in storage for more than a decade, the full-scale model was moved a few blocks to a temporary home.

The Inspiration space shuttle mockup was moved in sections to a temporary home last fall

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Courtesy Columbia Memorial Space Center

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The Space Center said renovation work on the mock up will take months and include rehabs of its 60-foot cargo bay and flight deck.

Dickow said Downey is where all of the Apollo capsules that went to the moon and all of the space shuttles were designed and built.

“This is part of the L.A. story as much as entertainment or anything like that,” Dickow said, adding that it’s a legacy he feels like Angelenos sometimes forget. “The space craft that took humanity to the moon, the space craft that brought humanity into lower earth orbit and built the international space station, these are human firsts... and they all happened right here.”

What’s next? 

The Space Center is looking to raise $50 million that would go toward building plans, special exhibits and more.

Dickow said the new building that will house the space shuttle mockup should be open to the public in about two years.

By early next year, he said the plan is to have the shuttle model available for bi-monthly public visits as it undergoes renovation.