Nonviolent Direct Action: Continuing the Legacy and work of an Unfinished Struggle Nonviolent Resistance and Direct Action:

 Continuing the Legacy and work of an Unfinished Struggle The Urban EpiCenter, continuing in the work and legacy of the civil rights movement, uses nonviolent resistance and direct action as the platform from which to advance racial and social justice. This orientation has been influenced by Rev. James Lawson (also referred to as Dr.James Lawson), one of the world’s foremost theoreticians of nonviolent resistance and direct action, and a formal advisor to the Urban EpiCenter. In fact, shortly before his untimely death, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Lawson, “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”

Nonviolence: does not mean acceptance but resistance, not waiting but acting it is not at all passive. It involves: strikes, boycotts, non-cooperation, mass demonstrations, as well as appeals to the conscience of the world. Even to individuals in the oppressing groups who might break away from their past.

Direct-Action: does not deride using political rights, civil liberties, even the voting mechanism in those societies where they are available but recognizes the limitations of those controlled rights and goes beyond. -Zinn

"We have learned something these past few years about the inadequacies of our regular political structures to bring about desirable social change in a situation of urgency. When picketing, sit-ins, mass meetings and freedom rides this suggest that the normal channels of government are inadquate for the expression of their grievances and that the mechanism for the solution is rusty." -New Abolitionist 1964

 

The statement below was based on Lawson’s varied experience in nonviolent resistance:

Nonviolent Resistance and Direct Action:Continuing the Legacy and work of an Unfinished Struggle
The Urban EpiCenter, continuing in the work and legacy of the civil rights movement, uses nonviolent resistance and direct action as the platform from which to advance racial and social justice. This orientation has been influenced by Rev. James Lawson (also referred to as Dr.James Lawson), one of the world’s foremost theoreticians of nonviolent resistance and directaction, and a formal advisor to the Urban EpiCenter. In fact, shortly before his untimely death, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Lawson, “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence inthe world.” This statement was based on Lawson’s varied experience in nonviolent resistance:

• In the late 1940s, he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and the Congress ofRacial Equality (CORE);

• In the early 1950s, he served 13 months in federal prison as a conscientious objector ofthe Korean War;

• He spent three years in India after departing prison, an experience that gave him a deeper understanding of Mohandas Gandhi’s nonviolence philosophy and ethos;

• As early as the late 1950s, he traveled throughout the South training activists innonviolent resistance and direct action;

• In September 1957, he trained the “Little Rock Nine” in nonviolent resistance in thehome of NAACP leader Daisy Bates;

• In January 1958, he augmented Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s understanding ofnonviolence at an SCLC workshop in Columbia, South Carolina;

• Long after the civil rights movement, he remained (and continues to remain) active in  labor, economic justice, immigration, and civil rights movements.

In 1959 Dr. Lawson began to train a group of college students and community leaders inNashville, Tennessee in the methods of nonviolent direct action. Drawn primarily from American Baptist College, Fisk University, and Tennessee State University, the students emerging out of the Nashville Movement (as it is often referred) became the most disciplinedcadre of young people who used nonviolent direct action during the civil rights movement.

Among these young people who gathered with Dr. Lawson were John Lewis, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, Lynette Lewis, Diane Nash, Pauline Knight, Cordell Reagon, Lester McKinney, Angela Butler, Marion Barry, Paul Brooks, Earline Burks, Matthew Walker, Jr., andLeo `Kwame’ Lillard. This cadre used nonviolent direct action to tear down the walls of racial apartheid in Nashville’s downtown business sector in 1960, thus making it the first southern city to do so since Reconstruction. Dr. Lawson and the young people emerging out of the Nashville Movement also became leading figures in the major civil rights struggles and campaigns of the1960s:

•  The formation and development of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC);
• The 1961 Freedom Rides;
• The Albany, Georgia movement in 1961-1962;
• The Birmingham civil rights campaign in 1963;
• The Selma, Alabama campaign in 1965;
• The “March Against Fear” (From Memphis to Jackson, Tennessee) in 1966;
• The Chicago Freedom Movement (“End the Slums” campaign) in 1966;
• The Poor People’s Campaign in 1968;
• The Memphis sanitation workers’ strike in 1968.

The Urban EpiCenter marches in the legacy of Dr. Lawson and the Nashville Movement. With Dr. Lawson’s assistance, the Urban EpiCenter has institutionalized an ethos of radical democracy and nonviolent direct action into our organizational framework. As such, the Urban EpiCenter has worked on various campaigns including living wage, health care justice, and employment equity; and situates indigenous activists at the center (or EpiCenter) of our grassroots initiatives.

The Urban EpiCenter is also part of a diverse network called the Nonviolent Resistance Movement and Social Justice Committee (NRMSJC) that was established by Dr. Lawson in early 2007. The NRMSJC has assisted the development of a multi-year assessment of racism and oppression in 21st century Nashville, and created a curriculum on nonviolent resistance and directaction that is influenced by Dr. Lawson’s philosophy and approach to nonviolence.