James Lawson, Jr., born on this day in 1928, is an American activist and university professor who was expelled from Vanderbilt University for organizing acts of non-violent protest with the civil rights movement.

Lawson was a leading theoretician and tactician of non-violence within the civil rights movement. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

On his commitment to non-violent tactics, Lawson stated "I had my first racial insult hurled at me as a child. I struck out at that child and fought the child physically. Mom was in the kitchen working. In telling her the story she, without turning to me, said, 'Jimmy, what good did that do?' And she did a long soliloquy then about our lives and who we were and the love of God and the love of Jesus in our home, in our congregation. And her last sentence was, 'Jimmy, there must be a better way.' In many ways that's the pivotal event of my life."

Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his role in organizing the Nashville Sit-ins in 1960. He later served as a pastor in Los Angeles, California, for 25 years.

"Our country is a country trapped, embedded, addicted to the mythology of violence."

- James Lawson