A Totally Moral Man: Conversations with Rev. James M. Lawson on Black America, Civil Rights, and Nonviolence

Rev. James Lawson, currently Pastor Emeritus of the Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles’ Adams District, was one of the most influential architects of the civil rights movement and in many respects its most committed practitioner of the idea of nonviolent resistance. In his nonviolence workshops in Nashville he gathered and trained such figures as John Lewis, Diane Nash, James Bevel, etc. This book, based on 27 hours of recorded conversations with Vinay Lal, will tell his story.

Vinay Lal was born in New Delhi in 1961 and raised in India, as well as Jakarta, Tokyo, and Washington DC. He is currently Professor of History and Asian American Studies at UCLA. He writes widely on Indian history, historiography, public and popular culture in India, the Indian diaspora, colonialism, Gandhi and the idea of nonviolence, and the global politics of knowledge systems. His eighteen books include the two-volume Oxford Anthology of the Modern Indian City (Oxford, 2013); Deewaar: The Footpath, the City, and the Angry Young Man (HarperCollins, 2011).