Emily Yellin & John C. Lawson II — Nonviolent
The posthumous memoir of civil rights leader Reverend James Lawson Jr., presented with Archbishop Mariann Budde and journalist Karen Attiah at MLK Library.
Why we picked this
Lawson trained the Nashville sit-in students and helped organize the Freedom Rides — his memoir, completed posthumously by Yellin and his son, is the inside account of nonviolent strategy from its foremost American practitioner.
Reverend James Lawson Jr. was the person Martin Luther King Jr. called the foremost strategist of nonviolent direct action in the United States. That wasn’t flattery — Lawson had studied Gandhi’s methods in India before returning to the American South to train the students who conducted the Nashville sit-ins in 1960, one of the most disciplined and effective campaigns of the civil rights era. He went on to help organize the Freedom Rides and remained a central figure in the movement for decades. Nonviolent, his memoir, is the primary-source account of how that strategy was actually conceived and executed.
Lawson died in 2024 before the book was finished. Journalist Emily Yellin, who worked with him on the manuscript, and his son John C. Lawson II completed it. Their presentation at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library — the appropriate venue for this particular evening — includes two guests who bring distinct perspectives: Archbishop Mariann Budde, known for her direct public engagement with questions of political power and moral responsibility, and Karen Attiah, the Washington Post journalist and editor who has long covered the intersections of race, justice, and democracy.
The event is free and takes place at a library named for the man Lawson organized alongside — a detail that gives the evening a particular resonance. For anyone trying to understand the intellectual foundations of nonviolent resistance and where those ideas stand now, this is a rare opportunity to hear from the people who were closest to the source.