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Reviewed by:
  • Love & Solidarity: Rev. James Lawson & Nonviolence in the Search for Workers’ Rights by Michael Honey
  • Judson L. Jeffries
Michael Honey (Dir.), Love & Solidarity: Rev. James Lawson & Nonviolence in the Search for Workers’ Rights [motion picture]. Bullfrog Films, 2016.

The people of our land need to ask ourselves what kind of people we are, what kind of government we want for ourselves? Do we want a daily existence or an existence between elections that’s primarily about the enhancement of the powerful and the rich… do we want growing chaos, do we want more violence, do we want to increase poverty, structural poverty or do we want to be a people where we can see bonds of human affections… a period in which we become more and more connected to each other across every kind of human division.

—Rev. James Lawson

Love & Solidarity is a film that documents the struggles of the American worker. Featured prominently in the work is Rev. James Lawson, a stalwart of the modern civil rights movement and a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Although Lawson does not have the name recognition of such civil rights icons as Andrew Young, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and Ralph Abernathy, he stands tall among those who laid their lives on the line so that future generations of historically marginalized peoples may inherit a more just America.

In this 38-minute documentary Lawson gives what is perhaps the most profound definition of violence I have encountered. Lawson says, “Violence is the use of power to harass, intimidate, injure, kill, and destroy.” Mass incarceration is an example of that, says Lawson. The first two-and-a-half minutes sets the stage nicely for the remaining 36. It is punctuated by Kent Wong’s, Director of UCLA Labor Center, statement, “Rev. Lawson’s work is grounded in love and it is grounded in a deep appreciation and respect for the dignity of all human beings.”

In his words, “I grew up in a climate, in an environment of love and truth telling and music and talk and education… I felt quite comfortable in my skin.” Lawson points to a pivotal moment in his life during his elementary school years [End Page 131] when a racial slur was hurled at him by another student and he hit back. Upon arriving home he told his mother about the incident; at which point his mother asked him, “Jimmy what good did that do?” That encounter convinced Lawson that never again would he use his fists, whether on the playground or on the street.

A native of Massillon, Ohio, Lawson is a third generation clergyman, both his father and grandfather were Methodist ministers, prompting him to secure his local preacher’s license (in 1947) the year after he graduated from high school. Lawson’s participation in the modern civil rights movement did not begin with his acquaintance with Dr. King, but rather while he was a college student in Ohio, where he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), which was America’s oldest pacifist organization. It was at that time that Lawson was introduced to the nonviolent teachings of Gandhi, who had cut his teeth on the strategy of nonviolence in South Africa. Lawson quotes Gandhi, who said that “love is the most creative power of the universe, it is the greatest force available to humankind and humankind needs to learn how to use it.”

Lawson had become so taken with Gandhi’s teachings that he refused to register with the US armed forces during the Korean War in 1951. For his stance he was slapped with a three-year prison sentence. Fortunately, he was paroled a year later; upon his release he wasted little time in completing his college degree. By the time Lawson graduated from college in 1952 he knew that Blacks had to launch a major campaign of nonviolence. Convinced that Gandhi’s teachings were the key to non-violent struggle Lawson travelled to India, where he served as a campus minister and teacher at Hislop College in Nagpur, India.

After a stint in India Lawson returned to the US and in 1957 met a man who would ultimately...

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