James Lawson to Speak

I am writing to make you aware of a once-in-a-life- time opportunity that may interest you and your students.

James Lawson will be speaking at the Multi-faith Martin Luther King celebration on Sunday, January 18, at 3 PM.

While his is not a household name, it is probably fair to say that Jim Lawson was (and is) the chief advocate and theorist of non-violence in the American civil rights movement. More a teacher of Dr. King than his disciple, Lawson conducted workshops in non-violence in almost every civil rights campaign of the King era, and he continues to do so. He is the same age as Dr. King (80 this year). While a student at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio, he became convinced of the necessity of Christian non-violence. This moral conviction led him to a legal conviction for non-compliance with the military draft, for which he spent over a year in federal prison. Afterward, as a Methodist missionary in India for three years, he studied Gandhi intensely. He returned to the US just after the Montgomery bus boycott. When he met Dr. King at a speaking engagement at Oberlin, the two became committed partners for non-violence, and Lawson began his career as a teacher of non-violent resistance for social change. Lawson was the principal architect of the Nashville sit-in movement, He was imprisoned in Nashville, Montgomery, and Mississippi. He was the pastor in Memphis who led the sanitation workers' strike. It is he who invited Dr, King there, where he was killed.

James Lawson has never wavered on non-violence. Expelled from Vanderbilt Divinity School for his leadership in the Nashville movement, he now, after his retirement from a Methodist pastorate in Los Angeles, is in residence there as a distinguished professor.

We are immensely blessed by the opportunity to have this man speak to us on January 18. I hope that you will make interested colleagues and students aware that this is a man who changed American history. He remains vital, engaged, and dedicated to non-violence. He will speak at the chapel on the continuing importance of non-violence.

If I can provide more information, please don't hesitate to ask. Thank you for your interest and support.

Richard Crocker
College Chaplain and Virginia Rice Kelsey '61s Dean
William Jewett Tucker Foundation
Dartmouth College Hanover, NH 03755

Public Hearing on Bill to Expand Death Penalty

There will be a public hearing before the House Criminal Justice Committee next Wednesday, January 21 at 11:30 AM on House Bill 0037 sponsored by Rep Delmar Burridge. THIS BILL EXPANDS THE DEATH PENALTY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE to make it a capital crime if a person kills someone with a firearm while committing a felony. The bill also provides that the method of execution for a death penalty conviction of this crime will be by firing squad.

This will be the first day of hearings for the Criminal Justice Committee this legislative session, and the hearing on the bill will consideration of legislation since the verdict in the Addison trial. It will be important that there be opponents of expansion at the hearing. We need to mobilize to oppose this.