He held his meetings in Nashville churches, in black houses of worship that underscored his commitment to God and godliness. His students were largely college students, children from local colleges, some with names—Diana Nash, John Lewis, CT Vivian—that would eventually be recorded in the annals of the modern civil rights movement.
Many of them were out-of-towners who had descended on Middle Tennessee to attend the historically black schools there—Fisk, Tennessee A&I, et al.—and become part of a rich black community that had always been present, too although that was constantly the case. pushed to the margins.
These students brought different perspectives to the issue of race and race relations in Middle Tennessee. Some, from further south, viewed Nashville’s racism as a milder form; others, from the North, were shocked by how willingly black people seemed to adhere to an oppressive racial “etiquette.” Ultimately, everyone understood that a follow-up to the Montgomery bus boycott was necessary to maintain the movement’s momentum. They agreed that Nashville would be the ideal location to launch these efforts, both to secure local wins and catalyze national action.
But it was the proposed nonviolent approach that drew skepticism.
Embracing a philosophy of nonviolence meant denying yourself
The teacher understood this. He himself had traveled the same path to enlightenment. He had once been a young boy enraged by an ugly slur, and shocked when the word cut into his chest and wrapped vice-like tentacles around his heart.
He had given in to his flesh that day: the aching, burning flesh that demands an eye for an eye, your pain for mine. He punched that grinning boy right in the face; the retribution was sweet, if short-lived.
“What good was that?” his mother asked later, standing by the stove. His flesh had cooled by then – the pleasure of revenge is always too fleeting – and the boy had no answer.
This allowed him to guide his students on their journey years later. They learned about others who had denied their flesh – Mohandas Gandhi, Jesus – before making the courageous decision to deny their own flesh.
There is no “both sides” racism
The teacher would later say he was “terrified” before they took their seats at the segregated lunch counters in downtown Nashville. Their target was chosen by the black women among them, those affected by both gender and racial oppression. Yet even the men knew that the best-designed workshop exercises would pale in comparison to the pain in the body of a white police officer, or the burning sensation a white citizen gets when he presses a lit cigarette into his bare skin.
The nonviolent strategy had been as brilliant as it was poignant and divine. The approach not only strengthened participants’ faith in their own humanity, or their faith in a God who would defend this faithfulness. It introduced that humanity to others, to people across the country – no, the world – who watched in choked horror as white Nashvillians threw themselves at innocents who refused to respond with their own vitriol.
There would be no two sides on this issue.
Even white moderates who were content to let racial tensions resolve themselves (or not) began to realize that there was only one “side,” and it was evil. The bombing of civil rights attorney Z. Alexander Looby’s Nashville home on April 19, 1960 only confirmed this.
Within months, Nashville became the first southern city to desegregate its public spaces. It is for this reason that on the evening of April 19, during a speech in Fisk, Martin Luther King Jr. called the sit-ins “the best organized and most disciplined in our Southland.” It is also one of the main reasons why we celebrate and honor James Lawson, the architect of these demonstrations.
Far from the boy who was called the n-word and sought his own revenge, Lawson became a shining example of principle and discipline. He shared his faith and lived it daily, putting people – humanity – above our collective sins.
But now, after his death on June 9, we must mourn Lawson. And as we do, we must remember.
Was the nonviolent movement of the 1960s a failure? Not quite
Something happened in the years after those first cracks in Nashville’s segregated veneer: The city, conscious of its image on the national stage, tried to save face.
“Nashville, in the rolling green hills of Middle Tennessee, is a city of colleges and churches,” read The Tennessean on May 21, 1963, “and one thing it cannot stand is unpleasantness. It values peace and quiet the way Birmingham, to the south, values individual water fountains and defiance.”
Never mind that integration had been uneven and incomplete, that local courts were still swarming with lawsuits seeking to prevent black children from being stuck in the city’s worst schools, that black men and women were still excluded from the best jobs of the city.
CT Vivian, one of Lawson’s early students, would go so far as to say that the movement of the 1960s was largely a failure.
“We would achieve the abolition of some discriminatory legislation, only to find that the discrimination continues,” he wrote in his book Black Power and the American Myth. “We would win passage of a new law, only to see it no longer enforced.”
I pointed out that the data is visible The shortcomings of public education in Nashville. Critics got angry
I don’t think Lawson would not use world failure. However, he would say that the movement’s efforts were incomplete. They were incomplete then, and they are certainly incomplete now.
Today, injustice doesn’t look like dynamite bombings and men in white hoods, “colored only” water fountains and whites-only swimming pools. But in Nashville (and beyond), we only have to look around us—at the education gap, the health gap, the wealth gap, and all the other divides that still separate whites and blacks—to understand that it still exists.
And hopefully to remember.
If we truly want to honor Lawson, we must remember not to return pain for pain, nor rebuke for rebuke. The fight for justice must evolve, just as injustice itself has evolved. Nonviolence, while far from a passive endeavor, must be accompanied by deliberate action, including cooperation, pooling of resources and, most importantly, the courage to challenge injustice where it occurs.
Then, in the searing heat of hatred, all we have to do is remain steadfast in our humanity and our beliefs.
We just need to lead with love – and trust that evil will make itself known.
Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nonviolent Action Teacher James Lawson Needs Us to Keep Working
