wfn.org | United Methodist pastor central figure in new Halberstam book

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April 21, 1998     Contact: Tim Tanton*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.
10-71B{240}

A United Methodist News Service feature
By Bob Lear*

(Book review: The Children by David Halberstam, Random House, New York,
1998, $29.95, 783 pages.)

Not all mid-winter days in Oberlin, Ohio, make history, but a new book
by a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer begins at just such a point 41 years
ago - a critical moment for the civil rights movement.

On a February day in 1957, two promising young black ministers, both
disciples of the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi, met at Oberlin College.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., emerging as a civil rights leader who
recently had been elected head of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC), was speaking at Oberlin. The Rev. James M. Lawson
Jr., son of a Methodist Episcopal Zion pastor and formerly a missionary
in India, was a student working toward completion of his education for
service as a Methodist clergyman.

King "was fascinated by the discovery of this kindred soul, who seemed
to see politics and religion blended together into an activist gospel
that had not merely a larger strategic purpose but tactical goals,"
writes David Halberstam in The Children, published recently by Random
House.

When Lawson mentioned his educational  timetable, Halberstam writes,
King broke in, saying:  "Don't wait! Come now. We need you right now."

Lawson agreed to go to the South immediately, and he began holding
seminars on nonviolence for black college students in Nashville, Tenn.

"The children" -- so named by a black pastor -- initially were the core
group of eight students who led the first day of sit-ins at Nashville
lunch counters.  The sit-ins were among the first major events in the
intense and often violent civil rights struggle that engulfed the South
and much of the nation.

While the principal focus of Halberstam's book is on the original eight
"children" and a variety of other individuals and events, the volume in
many ways is virtually a biography of Jim Lawson's life and ministry in
the civil rights movement. At the same time, he was a leader in United
Methodist developments.

Halberstam was a young reporter for The Tennessean, a daily Nashville
newspaper, during part of the years of struggle.  In preparation for
writing The Children, he interviewed more than 100 people. They are
listed, along with an extensive bibliography.

Names of individuals running through the book make up a virtual who's
who of civil rights and pacifist leaders -- Glen Smiley and A.J. Muste
of the Fellowship of Reconciliation; Harvey Cox, then director of
religious activities at Oberlin; Howard Thurman, distinguished black
professor at Boston University School of Theology and inspiration for
both King and Lawson; and Ralph Abernathy of the SCLC.

Also appearing are Will Campbell, the liberal white clergyman who was a
National Council of Churches representative; Kelly Miller Smith, black
Baptist pastor in Nashville and confidant of Lawson; and James Forman
and Stokley Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), with whom Lawson had bitter verbal encounters.

Halberstam graphically describes clashes between civil rights marchers
and lawmen, such as the brutal "Bull" Connor, Birmingham, Ala., police
commissioner, and Jim Clark, sheriff of Selma, Ala. The book also gives
compelling accounts of  incidents such as the attacks on the
Selma-Montgomery marchers at the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma; the
violence generated by the Freedom Rides; Lawson's expulsion from
Vanderbilt University Divinity School at the urging of the
then-segregationist publisher of the Nashville Banner, Jimmy Stahlman;
and King's fateful trip to Memphis to lead a march by striking
sanitation workers.

As told by Halberstam, King's assassination was probably the most tragic
personal experience for Lawson in his civil rights efforts:  

"After King's murder, Jim Lawson worked hard not to let his grief show
in public, fearing if he openly revealed it, this would not help those
in his congregation who were struggling with their emotions.

"Only his wife, Dorothy, was privy to the moments when he would think of
Martin Luther King and what happened, and then burst into tears.  

"There were times after King's murder when his grief was so great he
wondered whether he could go on."

Lawson, who worked with the sanitation laborers, remains convinced that
James Earl Ray, convicted trigger-man in King's assassination, was the
tool of a conspiracy of a composition still unknown.

As recently as March 28 this year, Lawson called on Ray in prison and
later asserted that, "I believe he (Ray) is innocent. He realizes that
he was being set up."

Along with the grief, there were happy moments during Lawson's pastorate
of the prominent black United Methodist church in Memphis.

Poignant is the account of Lawson taking his year-old son, John, to a
children's park near the zoo, which officially was segregated. Despite
some hard looks, no one ever said anything, and John regularly played in
tunnels and on swings intended for white children.

Most of the core group of students have their lives brought up to date
in chapters near the end of the book. A number have achieved prominence
in politics, education and business.

Lawson, pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles since
l974, remains remarkably unchanged in his beliefs after nearly four
decades of social activism in contemporary America, Halberstam
concludes.

"He had been an integrationist back in the late fifties, when it was
unfashionable in the white community, and now he remains an
integrationist when it (is) unfashionable in much of the black world. He
remain(s), as he had been as a young man, at once a radical Christian
and an integrationist, a man who believe(s) in and yet constantly
question(s) the American Dream ... (but) his dream (is) significantly
less materialistic than the one conjured up by most of his fellow
citizens."

# # #

*Lear, a retired staff member of United Methodist News Service, resides
in Wernersville, Pa.

United Methodist News Service
(615)742-5470
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