About James Lawson (activist)
James Morris Lawson Jr. was an American activist and university professor. He was a leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his civil rights activism in 1960, and later served as a pastor in Los Angeles for 25 years. Lawson was among the first who was arrested during the Jackson Freedom Ride arrests. He co-founded the Committee on the Move to Equality (COME). A class taught by Lawson, Kent Wong, Kelly Lytle Hernandez, and Ana Luz Gonzalez inspired UCLA students to publish Wong, Kent; González, Ana Luz; Lawson, James M. (2016).
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.