This post was updated Aug. 11 at 10:14 p.m.

The Rev. James Lawson Jr. – a civil rights activist, UCLA faculty member and the namesake of a UCLA Labor Center building – died June 9. He was 95.

Lawson was known for his involvement in the 1960s civil rights movement, where he worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. on desegregation efforts through organizing lunch counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides and supporting the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, said Kent Wong, the project director for labor and community partnerships at the Labor Center.

While studying at Vanderbilt University in the late 1950s, Lawson trained community members and students in nonviolent direct action, a method of social change that goes beyond voting or the courts and does not involve the threat or use of harm to others. In 1960, inspired by the Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter sit-in, Lawson helped launch protests in Nashville, Tennessee. The Nashville sit-ins culminated in the arrests of more than 150 students and Lawson’s expulsion from Vanderbilt, but they accelerated the desegregation of lunch counters across the city.

Not only did Lawson influence the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, but he also influenced the Los Angeles labor movement in the late ’80s and ’90s, said Los Angeles City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez. Lawson played a role in the formation of UNITE HERE Local 11, a union that represents hospitality workers in southern California and Arizona, he added.

“He never compromised who he was,” Soto-Martínez said. “The civil rights movement – that was led by nonviolent direct action. The sense of spirituality waned and died out in the late ’60s, especially with the murder of Martin Luther King, but despite that he continued to believe what he believed and brought it to Los Angeles.”

Nonviolent tactics were a key part of Lawson’s work and something he is recognized internationally for.

“His work here in Los Angeles has continued that process of using the power of nonviolence in supporting major movements for economic and social justice,” Wong said.

Lawson was a founder of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, a coalition of religious organizations that works with unions and worker organizations to advance economic justice, Wong said.

Lawson also engaged with a number of social movements in LA, including the Justice for Janitors campaign, which advocates for fair pay, healthcare and respect for janitors nationally, Wong said. He added that Lawson also supported Black Lives Matter and the living wage campaign to raise the minimum wage.

At UCLA, Lawson also worked on the Opportunity for All campaign, which focuses on securing job rights for undocumented students within the UC and California State University systems, he said.

Lawson attended a rally with the Opportunity for All campaign in May 2023, the day that the UC Board of Regents was scheduled to vote on a proposal that would have made undocumented students eligible for employment on UC campuses, said Karely Amaya, one of the main student organizers of the campaign who recently graduated with a master’s in public policy.

“Right before the vote, (the) Rev. Lawson led us in a beautiful speech about how no student is illegal, and how the word ‘undocumented’ is just a nuance put by man – but that we’re all human and that we’re all part of the human race and should be valued right by that,” Amaya said. “That was really powerful.”

Wong, who taught a class with Lawson called “Nonviolence and Social Movements” for 22 years, said the class provided an important opportunity for students to learn from a civil rights icon.

“It was so impressive that at his age, he had come back to UCLA to teach and share his stories and his anecdotes of doing sit-ins, of getting arrested, of getting beat up,” said Amaya, who was a student in Lawson and Wong’s class during her first undergraduate year at UCLA.

In 2018, Lawson was awarded the UCLA Medal – UCLA’s highest honor – by then-Chancellor Gene Block. In 2021, a UCLA Labor Center building was named the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center. In 2023, the LA County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Sept. 22 that year to be designated Rev. James Lawson Jr. Day.

“I am so happy because (the) Rev. Lawson was honored while he was alive,” Amaya said. “We were able to celebrate those accomplishments (and) teach-ins with him while he was here, but I hope that we continue sharing the stories.”