Beginning this month, we have moved our meeting date and place:
Date: Third Wednesday of the month
Place: First United Church of Christ, 1500 Tiffin Rd., Fremont (at the Ballville Bridge). Thank you to our member Rev. Elaine Bast for hosting us!
This month’s meeting is Jan. 21.
6:30 pm Potluck, conversation, and business
7:30 pm Program: Half hour video followed by discussion.
Program 1 from A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, a PBS series on the book by the same name. This segment features the Nashville lunch counter sit-in and subsequent desegregation in 1960, organized by James Lawson, who was inspired by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
When this film is used in nonviolence trainings, it usually produces a great deal of discussion and insights into the use of nonviolence in the civil rights movement and beyond.
From the Study Guide:
PROGRAM ONE: NASHVILLE — “WE WERE WARRIORS”
Synopsis
In late 1959 the Rev. James Lawson,
a young civil rights activist, starts training
African-American college students in
Nashville, Tennessee, in techniques of
nonviolent action. Inspired by a trip to
India to study Gandhi and by the 1955
bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama,
led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lawson
decides to try his own hand at nonviolent
struggle against racial segregation. To
stifle the movement for equality, defenders
of the old order in the South resort to
violence and repression.
On February 13, 1960, after months
of training, Lawson’s students take seats
at whites-only lunch counters in several
big department stores in Nashville.
When they try to order food, they are
ignored by the waitresses and left sitting
there all day. They return several more
times, and then on February 27 they are
beaten and arrested. Outraged by the
way innocent students have been treated,
the black community in Nashville begins
boycotting the stores. The disruption
of the city’s life makes many whites
uncomfortable, and business suffers badly
from the loss of black and white
customers downtown. Finally, after the
bombing of a black lawyer’s home and
a subsequent protest march, the mayor
of Nashville tells black students that he
believes segregation is wrong. Soon
stores desegregate. Within weeks
black people are eating at the counters
formerly reserved for whites only.
PROGRAM ONE: NASHVILLE — “WE WERE WARRIORS”
Synopsis
In late 1959 the Rev. James Lawson,
a young civil rights activist, starts training
African-American college students in
Nashville, Tennessee, in techniques of
nonviolent action. Inspired by a trip to
India to study Gandhi and by the 1955
bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama,
led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lawson
decides to try his own hand at nonviolent
struggle against racial segregation. To
stifle the movement for equality, defenders
of the old order in the South resort to
violence and repression.
On February 13, 1960, after months
of training, Lawson’s students take seats
at whites-only lunch counters in several
big department stores in Nashville.
When they try to order food, they are
ignored by the waitresses and left sitting
there all day. They return several more
times, and then on February 27 they are
beaten and arrested. Outraged by the
way innocent students have been treated,
the black community in Nashville begins
boycotting the stores. The disruption
of the city’s life makes many whites
uncomfortable, and business suffers badly
from the loss of black and white
customers downtown. Finally, after the
bombing of a black lawyer’s home and
a subsequent protest march, the mayor
of Nashville tells black students that he
believes segregation is wrong. Soon
stores desegregate. Within weeks
black people are eating at the counters
formerly reserved for whites only.
People for Peace & Justice Sandusky County 