James M. Lawson Jr., who died last week, was a legendary hero of the civil rights movement; the pastor, for 25 years, of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles; and, in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ words, “a man who changed history.”

But to me, Jim Lawson was, first and foremost, an incredible teacher.

Originally published in the Los Angeles Times on June 16, 2024.

Monday is the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. Now, when the country is awash in divisiveness, fear, anger and incoherence, the message of hope delivered Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial challenges us to remember the courage and tenacity of those upon whose shoulders we stand.

Originally published in the Los Angeles Times on August 27, 2023.

April 3, 1968. The rain came down like a curtain. Ralph Abernathy and I had just left Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel. I was a local pastor and the chairman of the black sanitation workers’ strike. Martin had come to Memphis at my invitation to lead a mass march scheduled for April 5. It was just the kind of march Martin felt the movement needed--one that joined issues of racism and poverty.

Originally published in the Los Angeles Times on April 3, 1998.

“Being black is like having a second job,” tennis-great Arthur Ashe once said. Learning to define and to sustain one’s identity in a society that views you not as a person but as a category demands extra energy on top of whatever else you are doing. Du Bois called it our “twoness.” To Ralph Ellison, it was being an “invisible man.” For me, the second job of being black has formed my identity in profound ways.

Originally published in the Radcliffe Quarterly in the Fall/Winter 1997 issue.

“C’mon…Junior is on TV!” I was visiting my grandparents near Shelbyville, Kentucky, that hot August day. Back then, if anybody Black was on TV, we’d all come running. There was my uncle, Whitney Young, Jr., executive director of the National Urban League, speaking at the March on Washington. I didn’t know what Uncle Whitney’s job was, but clearly this was a big deal. I later learned Congressman John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Phillip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Dorothy Height, Bayard Rustin and Uncle Whitney had planned the March together.

Originally published in Louisville-Courier Journal on August 6, 2020.

As a mother of two African American boys, ages 14 and 18, I worry a lot.

Last week, three African American men, Brian Byrd, Ty Elliot and Damon Burris, were killed in South Los Angeles on the same day. Despite a 20% decrease in citywide murders in 2003 compared with the corresponding period of last year, these homicides marked the most recent in a series of killings.

Originally published in the Los Angeles Times on April 11, 2003.

“It was not all peachy keen,” Congressman John Lewis told me as he described preparations for the 1963 March on Washington. “It was not all kumbaya.” In 2008, I interviewed John Lewis for a documentary I was producing about my uncle, Whitney Young, Jr, another organizer of the March. I wanted to learn the behind the scenes story from someone who was there.

Being a Black mother in America means being willing to sacrifice your children’s innocence in order to save them. “Never run down the street.” I had told my sons as they approached their teenage years. “You are young black men in America.”