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A resolution recognizing the Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr. for his leading role in the civil rights movement in Nashville and Davidson County and his decades for work promoting non-violence and equality.
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WHEREAS, the Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr., has spent a lifetime teaching non-violent direct action, organizing and engaging in civil rights efforts, and advocating for equality across the country; and
WHEREAS, Rev. Lawson trained in Ghandi's use of nonviolence to achieve social and political change while living in India as a missionary in the 1950s; and
WHEREAS, Rev. Lawson moved to Nashville to enroll in Vanderbilt University's Divinity School in 1957 after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. encouraged him to move to the American South to teach non-violence on a larger scale; and
WHEREAS, Rev. Lawson organized workshops and taught the methods and ideals of non-violent direct action to community members and university students in Nashville, including Diane Nash, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, the Rev. C.T. Vivian, and Ernest "Rip" Patton; and
WHEREAS, the Nashville Student Movement soon conducted lunch counter sit-ins at various downtown Nashville stores in 1960, which led to heated backlash, violence, and more than 150 arrests of the student demonstrators; and
WHEREAS, as the sit-ins accelerated in Nashville, Rev. Lawson's role with the Nashville Student Movement led to his expulsion from the Vanderbilt Divinity School, an action for which the university later apologized and conceded was wrong; and
WHEREAS, on April 19, 1960, after the bombing of attorney Z. Alexander Looby's home, the Nashville Student Movement and Rev. Lawson marched in protest to the Nashville Courthouse and confronted Nashville Mayor Ben West, who conceded that segregation was wrong and that lunch counters in the city should be desegrated; and
WHEREAS, thanks to Rev. Lawson's work, Nashville became the first major Southern city to begin desegregating its public facilit...
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