The Rev. James Lawson, Distinguished University Professor at Vanderbilt and a key leader in the nonviolent resistance efforts of the civil rights movement, will be the featured speaker at the Vanderbilt Peabody College 2007 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration. His lecture, “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” will take place on Thursday, Jan. 25, at 12:30 p.m. in the Wyatt Center Rotunda. This event is free and open to the public.
The college will present its Changing Lives Award to Elaine Brown, director of outreach and admissions at the Tennessee School for the Blind, at the event. Brown has been with the school as a teacher and administrator since 1975.
The Changing Lives Award, first given in 1997, recognizes an individual or organization in the Nashville area whose work uses an understanding of psychological and educational processes to promote positive human change. The award honors the recipient and upholds the honoree as a role model and inspiration in shaping personal and professional lives.
“Elaine Brown embodies the qualities of intelligence, compassion, and service that are the hallmarks of recipients of the Changing Lives Award,” Camilla P. Benbow, dean of the college, said. “As an alumna of the college, she also provides a worthy role model for students and others interested in furthering the legacy of Dr. King through education.”
Lawson moved to Nashville in the late 1950s to teach the use of nonviolence to accomplish change. He coordinated nonviolent protests across the city and soon became a powerful force within the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. described him as “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”
Lawson‘s expulsion from Vanderbilt Divinity School and the resulting resignations of faculty members in protest embroiled the campus and the Nashville community in a nationally reported controversy for months in the spring of 1960. Eventually, a compromise was forged to stop most of the resignations and allow Lawson to complete his degree in Nashville. Lawson instead chose to transfer to Boston University.
In 2005, he was named Vanderbilt University Distinguished Alumnus and returned to the campus as Distinguished Visiting Professor in 2006. A retired United Methodist minister, Lawson continues to teach nonviolence and to work for justice, equity and peace both locally and globally.
For a complete listing of events scheduled for the 2007 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Series at Vanderbilt, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/mlk.
For more news from Vanderbilt visit VUCast, Vanderbilt‘s news network, at www.vanderbilt.edu/news.
Media contact: Melanie Moran, (615) 322-NEWS
melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu