and enrolling at Vanderbilt Divinity School as the second African-American student in its history. (9) Rev. Lawson opened a Fellowship of Reconciliation field office, became the southern secretary for the organization, and held seminars to train volunteers in Gandhian tactics of nonviolent direct action. (10) Rev. Lawson was an advisor for the Little Rock Nine, teaching the students, in the living room of Arkansas NAACP Chair Daisy Bates, how to resist their opponents using the superior weapons offered by nonviolence. (11) Rev. Lawson led the Nashville sit-in campaign of 1960 that successfully challenged Jim Crow and trained a new generation of civil rights activists. (12) In 1960, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Ella Baker, organized the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, with Rev. Lawson writing the statement of purpose for the organization and delivering the keynote speech at the organization’s founding meeting in April of that year. (13) Rev. Lawson, and the activists he trained, organized many famous campaigns, including the Freedom Rides, Freedom Schools, 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, and 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. (14) In 1968, Rev. Lawson chaired the strike committee for the Memphis Sanitation Workers, a campaign that advanced the slogan “I Am A Man” and was the first successful effort to organize African-American municipal workers in the South. (15) Dr. King lauded Rev. Lawson as the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world and civil rights leader Diane Nash stated that Rev. Lawson’s impact was fundamental and tremendous. I think that he, more than anyone else really, is why the civil rights movement was nonviolent . (16) In 1974, Rev. Lawson became pastor of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, where he continued his nonviolent advocacy for racial equality and social justice, including through Clergy and