A pensive Rev. James Lawson at Vanderbilt University in May 2022. (Photo: John Partipilo)
James Lawson
Rev. James Lawson, a leader of the Civil Rights Movement who trained scores of activists during his time in Nashville — many of whom went on to prominence — died June at the age of 95 of cardiac arrest.
Lawson, an Ohio native, studied the nonviolent resistance techniques championed by Indian lawyer and anti-colonial activist Mahatma Gandhi while serving as a Methodist missionary in India. Upon his return in 1956, he began studying theology at Oberlin College, where he was introduced to Martin Luther King, Jr.
King urged Lawson to move south and by 1958, Lawson was a student at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School while also serving as the southern director for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and conducting workshops in nonviolence techniques for students from Tennessee State University, Fisk University and Vanderbilt. Among the students he tutored were John Lewis, who went on to chair the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later to serve in Congress; Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette and Marion Barry.
Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt for his protest activities at the urging of Nashville Banner Publisher James Stahlman, who sat on the university’s board of trustees.
Lawson helped develop strategy for the Freedom Rides, the 1961 campaign to desegregate interstate bus travel and was serving as minister of Centenary Methodist Church in 1968 during a sanitation workers strike. At Lawson’s request, King came to Memphis, where he delivered his famous “Mountaintop” speech and was later assassinated.
He moved to Los Angeles and in his later life, Lawson continued to serve as a minister and leader for civil rights, becoming active in the labor movement.
With his support, Vanderbilt created in 2022 the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements at Vanderbilt University, which is housed in the College of Arts and Sciences and Divinity School.
Dick Lodge
Richard “Dick” Lodge, a former chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party who worked to create the Super Tuesday presidential primary died September 20.
Lodge served as Democratic Party chair from 1983-1988, during which time he headed the Committee of Southern States, an organization that proposed holding all southern state primaries on the same day to increase their power in choosing the Democratic nominee for President.
“When your dog bites you four or five times, it’s time to get a new dog. We’ve been bitten and it’s time for the South to get a new dog,” said Lodge of the Super Tuesday primary concept, according to historian Barbara Norrander.
Born in Sewanee, Tennessee, Lodge was a graduate of Sewanee: The University of the South, and Vanderbilt University Law School. He worked on the successful 1976 U.S. Senate campaign of the late Jim Sasser and served as his first legislative director in Washington, D.C.
After returning to Tennessee in 1978, Lodge headed the government affairs practice at Nashville law firm Bass, Berry & Sims, and was appointed first chair of the Metro Nashville Sports Authority by then-Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen. He served as president of Legal Services of Middle Tennessee, a nonprofit law firm that defends the legal rights of low income and vulnerable Tennesseans, and worked with Thistle Farms, a Nashville-based organization that provides housing and job training to women recovering from sex trafficking, addiction or prostitution
Winfield Dunn
Former Gov. Winfield Dunn, who in 1970 became the first Republican elected governor in more than 50 years, died September 28 at the age of 97.
Bryant Winfield Culberson Dunn was a Mississippi native who graduated from the University of Tennessee Dental School in Memphis.
According to a biography on the Tennessee Secretary of State’s website, Dunn’s political views were influenced by Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s book, “Conscience of a Conservative.”
But Dunn had not run for office before when, with the encouragement of Sen. Bill Brock, a fellow Republican, he ran for governor in 1970. He defeated Democrat John Jay Hooker, and served one term in office: the Tennessee Constitution barred governors from serving consecutive terms.
While in office, Dunn established the Department of Economic and Community Development.and of the Department of General Services. He supported the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21-18 and established kindergarten statewide in public schools.
In 1986, he ran for governor again, losing to Democratic Speaker of the House Ned McWherter.
Oscar Brock, a member of the Republican National Committee and son of the late Bill Brock, said Dunn was “always the perfect gentleman, always with a kind word for you or a family member.”
Jim Sasser
Jim Sasser, a three-term representative from Tennessee to the U.S. Senate and former chair of the state Democratic Party, died September 10 at 87.
Sasser was the last Democrat to hold a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee, during an era when Democrats dominated state politics. His 1994 defeat with hindsight marked the beginning of the end of the party’s dominance in the Volunteer state.
Sasser, a graduate of Vanderbilt Law School, spent much of his early professional years working as a political activist and then the Democratic Party operative, including for the campaigns of U.S. Sens. Estes Kefauver and Albert Gore Sr.
Former Republican Sen. Bill Brock defeated Gore in his 1970 Senate reelection campaign, which Sasser managed. Six years later, Sasser ran for the Senate himself and beat Brock, going on to win two more terms.
Sasser steadily rose through the ranks of the U.S. Senate, becoming chair of the powerful Budget Committee in 1990, which gave him a chance to become the U.S. Senate Majority Leader if he won reelection in 1994 and Democrats retained the majority.
An Associated Press article from May 1994 says Sasser was “known for caution” and focused on “bringing projects back to Tennessee during his first years in Washington.”
“I’ve always viewed government as the friend of the ordinary people, and politics as being an interesting avocation and a way of effecting positive change,” the Associated Press quotes Sasser as saying, calling him “corny.”
Former Rep. Jim Cooper, a Nashville Democrat who also ran for Senate in 1994, said Sasser always remained close to his Tennessee working-class roots, remaining a fair and humble person, who never acted like a big shot.
After Sasser’s defeat, Clinton appointed him ambassador to China. While he was serving in Beijing, protests erupted when the U.S. accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War, leading Sasser to gain national media attention as tried to ease tensions.
After his time in China, Sasser and his wife lived in Washington D.C., moving to North Carolina to be closer to his family later in life. But he kept ties to Tennessee, donating his congressional papers to Vanderbilt in 2013.
Bill Freeman
William H. “Bill” Freeman, a titan of Nashville’s business community, philanthropist, former mayoral candidate and a leading fundraiser for the Democratic Party, died November 17.
A native of Nashville, Freeman attended the University of Tennessee before dropping out to begin his career in real estate. After becoming friends with Jimmy Webb through their involvement with the Nashville Junior Chamber of Commerce, the two launched Freeman Webb Company, a real estate investment, management, and brokerage, in 1979. Prior to that, he worked for the Metro Development and Housing Agency.
Freeman was the single most significant Democratic fundraiser in Tennessee and the Southeast, raising money for President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, as well as countless Democratic local and federal candidates. Obama appointed him to the Kennedy Center Advisory Committee on the Arts in 2016 by U.S. President Barack Obama, and he was an early endorser of Biden, who appointed Freeman to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Freeman also served as a member of the White House Historical Association and in 2009 as treasurer of the Tennessee Democratic Party
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