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by Rajmohan Gandhi (Author)
James Lawson (1928-2024) was a key figure in the American Civil Rights
Movement who trained a generation of civil rights activists in the Gandhian
philosophy and practice of nonviolent resistance. Yet his name rarely makes it
into popular retellings of the movement, especially outside the United States.
Drawing on conversations late in Lawson's life, historian Rajmohan Gandhi
follows this son of a Methodist pastor from a small Ohio town, Massillon,
through college debates, prison time as a conscientious objector during the
Korean War, and into the circles of Martin Luther King Jr and Bayard Rustin.
The pages move back and forth between family memories, local archives and
Lawson's own words. A key episode in the story is Lawson's three-year stay
in Nagpur in the 1950s, where, steeped in Gandhi's ideas and friendships
with Indian and African students, he refined the methods of nonviolent
direct action he would later teach in Nashville. His workshops there helped
shape the famous sit-in campaigns against racial segregation-campaigns that
spread across and helped transform the American South.
This is a compelling, affectionate portrait of an extraordinary champion of
love and justice, whose life and work have urgent lessons for our world today.
It is a story of courage without theatrics, and faith without platitudes, told by
the Mahatma's grandson-a scholar and thinker who came to it from across
an ocean.
