[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 98 (Tuesday, June 11, 2024)]
[House]
[Page H3712]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING REVEREND JAMES LAWSON

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, this world lost one of its most outstanding 
citizens yesterday. Reverend James M. Lawson passed away at age 95.
  Reverend Lawson was one of the architects of the civil rights 
movement in our country that brought rights to African Americans and 
others. He was the architect of Dr. King's practice of nonviolence. He 
went to India, and he studied what Mahatma Gandhi had done in India to 
bring about rights in India.
  Dr. King adopted that and made him the person in charge of the 
Southern Christian Leadership Conference's nonviolence division. He 
marched in Selma with John Lewis, and both were beaten for trying to 
cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama.
  He was in Memphis as a minister in 1968 when the sanitation workers 
went on strike, the ``I Am A Man'' campaign. He encouraged Dr. King to 
come to Memphis, which he did, which resulted in Dr. King's 
assassination in Memphis on April 4.
  Reverend Lawson was a steadfast supporter of civil rights. He was 
against war, against the Vietnam war. He was for gay rights, for labor, 
and for progress in this country. He was a significant human being who 
did much for this world, and we will miss his opportunities to share 
and make us a better, a more perfect Union. His was a life well-lived.

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