The Rev. James Lawson, key architect of the Civil Rights Movement, dies at 95

A key architect of the Civil Rights Movement has died. The Rev. James Lawson was a staunch advocate for nonviolent resistance to racism, even in the face of brutality. A Methodist minister and student of Gandhi, Lawson was a mentor to Civil Rights leaders, including Diane Nash and the late John Lewis. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once called him the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence. He was 95 years old. NPR's Debbie Elliott has this remembrance.

ELLIOTT: Lawson transferred to Vanderbilt University in Nashville and began leading Saturday workshops in nonviolent strategies to desegregate downtown.LAWSON: I charted a course of doing sit-ins and then adding to that mass meetings, adding to that pickets, to do an economic boycott, then said we could do marches and other kinds of nonviolent direct actions.

I used some of the movement language that you are men. You're a child of God. You are somebody. You are the light of the world, Jesus said. Segregation tries to pretend that you're not a human being, you're not a man. But you have to fight that. Claim your humanity before God.

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