Jeremy Ryan

Starred Review This wonderful book is a powerful reminder that moral clarity can improve the world. As a boy, Lawson had a “transcendent” experience: “a voice beyond myself” forbid him from responding to racist taunts with violence. Thus began his lifelong commitment to nonviolence, which guided his work as an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. and an organizer of sit-ins, strikes, and marches that helped to overturn discriminatory laws. A Methodist pastor who died in 2024, his self-portrait...

From The New York Times Protesters blocking traffic on Friday night in Memphis after a video of the police killing of Tyre Nichols was released. Credit...Desiree Rios/The New York Times MEMPHIS — On April 3, 1968, shortly before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would deliver what turned out to be his last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” at a Memphis church packed with striking sanitation workers, the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a local minister and national strategist of nonviolent...

On Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford was the voice for those of us who are still haunted by decades-old assaults — including me. Christine Blasey Ford testifying Thursday on Capitol Hill.Credit. Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times One of the most telling moments of Thursday’s Senate hearing for me — a survivor of rape at a drunken high school party when I was 16 — came during a reply to one of Senator Patrick Leahy’s questions for Christine Blasey Ford. He asked her to describe her...