Author and biographer Rajmohan Gandhi describes the subject of his new book as “the American who knew most about [Mahatma] Gandhi’s life and about non-violent action and Satyagraha”.  His latest work, James Lawson: The teacher of Satyagraha (Speaking Tiger), is the first biography of a key figure in the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.

Reverend James Lawson trained a generation of American activists in Gandhian methods and philosophy to fight against the racial oppression of African Americans. Yet, despite the important role he played in carrying the central philosophy of the Indian independence movement to America, his name rarely features in India or in the retelling of the American movement.

Rajmohan tells the remarkable story of Lawson, drawing on his own conversations with him, along with family memoirs and local archives. He speaks about Lawson’s reverence towards Gandhi since the time he was in school, and the similarities in the lives of both figures. He also speaks about Lawson’s time in Nagpur in the 1950s in the company of many African students there, and why India was a major destination for people from parts of the developing world to get political inspiration.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

Q: To begin with, who is James Lawson?

Rajmohan Gandhi: Well, James Lawson died two years ago in 2024. He was one of Martin Luther King Jr’s closest and most valued associates. In the 1950s and 1960s, Lawson was an exceedingly well-known figure in the United States. He was a radical fighter for justice and equality for African Americans.

Lawson was passionately committed to nonviolence. He had studied Gandhi’s life when he was in school and when he was in college. And then again, when he was in India for three years in the 1950s. He was in Nagpur during that time, studying Gandhi’s life, and he became one of the best scholars of Gandhi. But apart from that, he also became possibly the most respected teacher of nonviolent direct action in the 1950s and 1960s in the south of the United States.

Lawson was exceedingly well known at that time.  But then the 60s were a long time ago. And some great positive legislation emerged in the 1960s under President [Lyndon B] Johnson’s presidency, and the world’s interest shifted to other matters. But one can be sure that James Lawson will be discussed. Mine is the first book on him to be out, but many more will be published because he was an extraordinary figure in many ways.

Q: How were you introduced to James Lawson?

Gandhi: So in the 1980s, I met a remarkable American professor called James Laue. He told me that the American who knows the most about Gandhi’s life, about non-violent direct action, and Satyagraha was a man called James Lawson. Thereafter, I wanted to meet Lawson, but circumstances did not make it possible for a very long time. It was only in 2019 that I finally met him.

He very kindly agreed that I could write the story of his life and made available all kinds of documents and papers. I went to the place where he was born, to the school he had studied, and the University of Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, where he studied for some time and inspired many of the professors and students to take part in non-violent direct action. He was dismissed and arrested here. And it is the same place where today, so many decades later, his papers are stored.

The university apologised to James Lawson and unveiled his portrait in a very important part of their campus. There is a very important James Lawson chair at Vanderbilt today. He’s highly honoured at the university that expelled him in 1960.

Q: And how did James Lawson come across Gandhi’s teachings?

Gandhi: Well, he came across Gandhi’s work when he was reading African American newspapers as a schoolboy and later in college and made up his mind to study Gandhi further. He was in college when he heard the news of Gandhi’s assassination.

He was also imprisoned for refusing to sign up as a soldier in the US Army. While in prison, he studied Gandhi some more and made plans for what he would do for nonviolent direct action in the United States.

After he was released, he spent three years in India. He was convinced that nonviolent direct action could take place in the United States before it actually took place. According to Martin Luther King, he became the best strategist of non-violent direct action in the United States.

Q: How did he implement Gandhi’s nonviolent action in the civil rights movement?

Gandhi: These were called sit-ins. Young African Americans would go to segregated restaurants where they were not allowed to sit or eat. As they sat, the police came to rough them up and push them out. They were jeered at, beaten, and arrested, but they remained non-violent.

So, when in the late 1950s and early 60s, non-violent direct action was countered by brutal repression, that is when the rest of the United States understood the depth of racial segregation and racial injustice, and that is when many in the US also learned and discovered the power of non-violent direct action.

James Lawson was very much responsible for the implementation of and the training in the practice of nonviolent direct action in America. How one should practise this philosophy when beaten or insulted was explained and taught by Lawson to those willing to enter the struggle.

Q: In your book, you mention that there are many similarities between Lawson’s personal life and that of Gandhi’s. Could you give a few examples?

Gandhi: Well, you know, when Lawson was in prison for nearly three years from 1950 to 53, there were some fellow prisoners who tried to provoke him, and even tried to assault him. He was wondering how he would resist this non-violently. Similarly, in Gandhi’s life, when he was in South Africa from 1893 to 1914, there were several times he went to prison there. In some of his imprisonments in South Africa, Gandhi writes that his fellow prisoners tried to assault him. The dilemmas that Gandhi faced and that Lawson faced in prison on how to give a non-violent response to those who try to attack you are extremely interesting, and I mentioned them in this book.

Q: You write that in the year 1936, Gandhi had sensed in his village thousands of miles away from America the potential power of the African American struggle. This is at least two decades before the civil rights movement actually took place. What about the African Americans moved him at this point?

Gandhi: In 1936, Gandhi was out of prison and wondering what to do next. He was in a place called Bardoli in Gujarat, not very far from his ashram in Ahmedabad, when about four or five African Americans, led by a very remarkable man called Howard Thurman, came to meet him. They had heard about Gandhi’s work, and they had a long conversation on issues such as how to apply non-violence if there was lynching of African-Americans. They also spoke about their struggles. Gandhi asked them to sing some of their spirituals.

At the end of that three-hour conversation, Gandhi wrote in his journal that he expected some great things to come from the African Americans, that they would probably teach non-violent direct action better than anybody else.

Q: So is it true that the African American movement for civil rights taught non-violence to the rest of the world?

Gandhi: It did. You know that in the 1980s, when in eastern Europe, the Soviet empire started to collapse, there were many actions, processions or demonstrations against authoritarianism and dictatorship. One of their heroes was Martin Luther King Jr., and they referred to non-violent direct action. They also spoke of Gandhi, but they spoke a lot more about Martin Luther King Jr. All over the world, we know about the struggles of Martin Luther King Jr. Even in India, we often run into youth groups who sing ‘We shall overcome’ or ‘Hum honge kaamyab’. That is a civil rights song connected with the associates of Martin Luther King and James Lawson.

Q: Why was James Lawson in Nagpur in the 1950s?

Gandhi: After he was released from prison, Lawson wanted to become a Methodist minister. The Methodist church in the US suggested that he should have some training and experience in India. The college to which he went in Nagpur was called Hislop College. It is still there.

Lawson was sent there to get teaching experience as a Methodist. But he was also a sporting coach, and you will be interested to know that he trained many young Indians in basketball, which was still not a popular sport in India. So, among other things, he also spread basketball in India.

Q: The chapter on James Lawson’s time in Nagpur is very interesting, also because I was surprised to know that there were many African students along with him there. This is after Gandhi’s death. Was it common at that time for the developing world to get political inspiration from India?

Gandhi: Absolutely. There was the Asian Relations Conference already in 1947. There was the African Asian movement. There was a non-aligned movement. There were so many attempts at solidarity between Asian and African countries. White supremacy was a reality and something that people in Asia and Africa did not like. They wanted equality.