Rev. James Lawson, Civil Rights Legend, Has Died

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.