Listen Online with Text Transcript

Download Complete Audio File (MP3 format / ca. 77.2 MB, 00:42:11)

Mozilla/Firefox: Right click and "Save Link As..."
Internet Explorer: Right click and "Save Target As..."

HTML file

XML/TEI source file

James M. Lawson was a key ally to Martin Luther King, Jr., and also an important theoretician and practitioner of non-violent protest. After briefly summarizing his childhood in Pennsylvania, Lawson describes how he became involved with the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen through activist preacher Will D. Campbell. Lawson's activism began during his time in Nashville, Tennessee. He tells Blanchard about how the Fisk and Vanderbilt students learned non-violent protest, and describes how he helped organize and execute the Nashville sit-ins. Lawson devotes much of the interview to discussions of his relationship with various civil rights activists, including Kelly Miller Smith, Nelle Morton, Myles Horton, James Dombrowski, and James Holloway. Though Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt because of his involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and his participation in the sit-ins, he remembers that several of the faculty members offered him a great amount of personal support. He also reconciled with some of his opponents later in life. Lawson closes the interview by asserting that the actions of the 1950s and 1960s emerged from the union and labor rights movements of the 1930s and 1940s.

Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection

Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews

Southern States--Race relations

Fellowship of Southern Churchmen

African Americans--Religion