Civil rights 'lion' says Americans must choose between justice and chaos

By Linda Grace-Kobas

"The revolution this nation needs has not yet begun," preached a man who has been a leader in the American civil rights movement for half a century at the second Martin Luther King Jr. lecture this month in Sage Chapel, Feb. 22.

The Rev. James M. Lawson, U.S. civil rights pioneer and friend and colleague of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., speaks during the second King lecture, Feb. 22, in Sage Chapel. Charles Harrington/University Photography

The Rev. James M. Lawson, introduced by Cornell Vice Provost Robert L. Harris Jr. as "a lion of the human and civil rights struggle," presented a message that hung between hope and despair for a society that, he said, is "closer to chaos" than at any other period in his lifetime.

"The danger to our country is worse than most of us know," Lawson said, because America has become a society that is a culture of violence, racism, sexism and addiction. The worst addiction is materialism, he added, saying, "We are stumbling systematically into greater chaos."

He described the reasons: a justice system that has jailed 2 million people -- 67 per cent of them people of color; thousands of jobs being cut to satisfy Wall Street; lack of an Equal Rights Amendment; globalization and the growing "security state" the United States is importing into South America. "The U.S. has become the number-one enemy of peace and justice in the world today," he said.

But he has not sunk into despair. "We have to somehow be engaged in a spiritual and moral revolution that will move us away from these insidious cultures," he said. "That's what Dr. King represents. We do not have to become the subjects of principles and powers of systematic violence. We can resist and organize ourselves to change it."

During the 1960s, Lawson was a leading figure in organizing civil rights campaigns using the principles of non-violence he had studied under Gandhi. He described the important role students played in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s, saying they were the "bulwark" of the Nashville desegregation movement.

"The advances America has made in quality of life have not come from the president or Congress but the tramping feet of people like ourselves," he told his audience. "No advance for the common good comes without we the people doing the struggle of work."

Lawson is teaching at Harvard University this semester. His Cornell lecture was sponsored by Cornell United Religious Work and supported by the office of the vice president for student and academic services.