James Lawson

Most Americans may view the civil-rights movement as a distant memory revisited nostalgically on the national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but James M. Lawson Jr., veteran of the movement and longtime pastor of Holman United Methodist Church, is still orchestrating nonviolent assaults on racism, poverty and injustice. His local crusade now is advocating for the proposed “living wage,” which, if passed by the City Council, would mandate pay increases and provide benefits for low-wage workers employed via certain city contracts. He is also fighting for a white man he believes was wrongfully convicted of a murder--the assassination of his friend and fellow minister, King.

Though Lawson has served as a pastor in Los Angeles for more than two decades, he remains best-known for his leadership of disciplined, nonviolent direct actions such as the Nashville sit-ins, the Freedom Rides and the Memphis sanitation workers strike--milestones in the violent struggle for black equality. In 1968, Lawson invited King to Memphis, where he was assassinated on April 4. James Earl Ray pleaded guilty. He remains in prison, Lawson believes unjustly.

Lawson first read about King in an article on the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott in the Nagpur (India) Times, where the young Methodist missionary studied the teachings of Gandhi, taught and coached. He met King in 1957, while he was a theology student at Oberlin College in Ohio. King invited him to bring his commitment to nonviolence to the South. Lawson did, and the rest is history.

The son and grandson of Methodist ministers--escaped slaves that traveled the Underground Railroad--Lawson grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where his father was a Methodist pastor. In fourth grade, Lawson decided fighting nonviolently was a better way than using his fists in anger, even when he was called vicious names and racial slurs. When he grew older, during World War II, Lawson held to this belief and was jailed as a conscientious objector--which proved invaluable when he later taught young civil rights protesters how to endure life behind bars.

Now 68, Lawson and his wife, Dorothy, have raised three sons. A jazz and classical music fan, he reads theology books, novels and mysteries--including a couple by President Bill Clinton’s favorite mystery writer, Walter Mosley. Lawson is no fan of Clinton, whose inauguration just happens to fall on the King holiday tomorrow. When the president is taking his oath of office, Lawson plans to meet with other progressive religious leaders at Holman, and attend a gathering in Orange County that will emphasize community diversity and unity. Next month, he plans to return to Memphis for a court hearing during which Ray’s lawyer will fight to reopen his case.

*

Question: You experienced racism in the South when it was physical and brutal. How has it changed?

Answer: The way some of us in the King movement have put it is: “Everything has changed and nothing has changed.” Whether or not the term “progress” is the best word, yes, change has occurred. At the same time it has to be understood that racism has also developed nuances. Racism is now a 15th-generation affair rather than a first-generation affair. History has moved so this is not now 1750 or 1810. It’s now 1997. It is foolish to think, therefore, that any social, cultural affair or any language has remained the same. Things have changed.

As an illustration, I was welcomed back to Vanderbilt University in 1996, as the distinguished alumnus of the School of Theology. . . . I was expelled in February of 1960, against the will of the faculty, by the trustees for my participation and organization of the sit-in campaign in Nashville.

Q: What are some current campaigns that stem from Dr. King’s legacy?

A: The “living wage” in Los Angeles and around the country would clearly be something that King would support. He died, after all, during a sanitation strike in Memphis. And, he told me on one occasion, when I picked him up at the airport, “Jim, you’re doing just what I expect to do with the poor people’s campaign.” The Memphis strike was about economic gain on behalf of workers. They were poor though they were workers. They never got a decent wage.

The living wage has attracted the attention of a broad spectrum of clergy, precisely because we think it is a form of activism that is essential, and reflects the best tradition of religious activism.

Q: You were part of the anti-209 campaign. Were you surprised it passed?

A: I was not surprised. I must add that had the Democratic Party put money into the fight against Proposition 209 as the Republican Party put money in for it, and if the coalitions against the proposition could have had a major media campaign on television and radio, we probably would have defeated it. It had a passage of 70% [in the polls] when the coalitions began to form. It only passed with 54%. Many, many people paid attention to the propaganda that 209 eliminates discrimination in California. They did not know that 209 abolishes basic state measures to eradicate discrimination.

Q: Clinton got a great deal of the black vote, and he is clearly comfortable with African-Americans. Yet you believe he has lost sight of Dr. King’s legacy?

A: Absolutely. You have to recognize that Clinton represents the white political force in the South that 30 years ago said King doesn’t know what he is doing . . . . That group is known now as the Democratic Leadership Council, the DLC. Clinton is an organizer. . . .

Q: How did Clinton win the loyalty of black voters?

A: He was approachable. He had a number of black bishop friends in Arkansas who passed the word around in their national conventions. He would go into a black church and become acquainted with that pastor and he’d hug that pastor, who knew him well as a governor. As governor of Arkansas he made a few black appointments and that was a superior approach to any previous governor.

He can boast that he has appointed more black people to various posts in Washington than any other president.

But he has not fought certain kinds of battles. My wife and I have had difficulties with him ever since he allowed Johnnetta Cole, the president of Spelman College, to be blackballed in 1992. He had her on the short list for appointment, and for his treatment of Lani Guinier [he withdrew her nomination for the Justice Department’s top civil rights post] and of [U.S. Surgeon General] Joycelyn Elders [who he fired]. In my judgment, they represented three highly talented, African-American professionals, competent in their fields, competent as human beings. He did not spend any political capital on that. That is a reflection of the man.

While he’s our president, in my judgment, he’s not a friend of justice in America or genuine progress for African-American people.

Q: Do you disagree with his approach to welfare reform?

A: What kind of morality is it that says that you cut benefits to children but you preserve a $39-billion nuclear war budget. . . ?

Q: When did you go to work for Dr. King?

A: I never really worked for Dr. King. I held my first workshop with him on nonviolence in February of 1958, in Columbia, S.C., where the SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] meeting was taking place. I was asked to do workshops on nonviolence, nonviolent training, nonviolent strategy, nonviolent philosophy . . . . In 1960, Martin King asked me to become director of nonviolent education for SCLC . . . . It was never a funded staff position. I was basically a volunteer. I did workshops when requested by various communities and participated in various campaigns at his request.

Q: Did he ask you to participate in the Memphis sanitation workers strike?

A: That was one of the movements I helped to work on because I was a pastor in Memphis. Like King, I always maintained a pastorate in the midst of [the civil-rights struggle] because for me being a pastor meant to work to change the social environment. In the South, that meant working against segregation.

In Memphis, the workers took six years to organize that strike. It did not begin in 1968. Some of them had lost their jobs for trying to organize a union . . . .

Memphis is like many things that happened in the King movement. A local group was working and then King was invited to come in . . . .

Q: You were there the day he was murdered?

A: The city government had taken out an injunction against Martin King, and James Lawson, others, workers and various clergy. We decided we would march anyway. In the meantime, we gathered lawyers in Memphis to take it to the federal court to get it reversed. April 4 was the day of the court hearing. Dr. King did not go. He asked Andrew Young to represent him. I represented the local movement. We were the two chief witnesses. That took a good part of the day . . . .

When I got out of court I went by our offices to see how things went during the day . . . As was my custom, I charged home at a little bit before six to have supper with my family. Just after I walked into the house, I heard the television saying something about shot. . . . A message came down at the bottom that Dr. King was shot at the Lorraine Motel. . . .

Q: Why do you doubt that James Earl Ray is the killer?

A: The evidence is overwhelming that he did not shoot Dr. King.

Q: Who killed Dr. King?

A: I don’t want to give specific names but I suspect it was one or two or three people that were specifically mentioned in the William Pepper book, “Orders to Kill: The Truth About the Murder of Martin Luther King,” which is the best legal document to date on the assassination of any of the people of the ‘60s. William Pepper [a lawyer who marched with King and who today represents James Earl Ray] has written a book from the perspective of a lawyer trying to get into court, revealing what his long-term investigation has uncovered . . . .

Q: How do you get to the truth?

A: Let the criminal court of Memphis open up a trial, which James Earl Ray has never had, or an evidentiary hearing . . . where we can bring into the court, the gun, the picture of the bullet. We have three homicide detectives who saw the bullet in King’s body . . . and said the bullet we gave to our superiors that was sent to the FBI was a whole bullet with just a dull point . . . The bullet that came back from the FBI was in three fragments. . . .

Put the case back in the court and have a full hearing . . . a jury trial with the evidence being cross-examined. We may not like the outcome of these things, but the whole history of the American judicial system is the way we get to the truth in any crime is to let the state present its case and let the defendant challenge it and let the court decide.

Q: Dr. King is most often remembered for his “I Have a Dream” speech. How do you remember him?

A: That’s a big question. I remember him most as a voice in the wilderness crying for justice and liberty for all, for simple justice, for opportunity for every child, every man.

Without parallel in religious history, King will be seen as the most significant prophet of the 20th century. Most of America forgets that King was a trained theologian who saw his calling as a calling from God, as a calling that encompassed the necessity of resisting social, political and economic evil, which racism was .

What this country does with King’s life and ideas and work will, in large measure, determine whether or not America will continue to experience chaos, or whether or not America will fulfill the promise of the extraordinary documents like the Preamble to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. What happens to King in the American mind, and in American public policy, will, in large measure, determine what happens to this country and the people of America.*