Hanover -- In 1960, Vanderbilt University expelled James Lawson because he helped lead nonviolent protests against segregated Nashville lunchrooms.

On a Tuesday night last November, nearly five decades later, Lawson finished teaching a class on nonviolent struggles and social movements at that same university. He then left the classroom, found a television and watched, by himself, as a black man won a presidential election for the first time.

“Quiet accomplishment,” Lawson said. “Quiet thanksgiving.”

Yesterday, Lawson, who has spent a lifetime as a civil rights activist, shared his thoughts on Obama, Martin Luther King Jr.'s impact on America and the ongoing need for nonviolent protests across the globe, with a crowd of more than 250 people at Rollins Chapel. The event was part of Dartmouth's annual weeklong King celebration, this year entitled, “Getting to the Mountaintop: Working through Conflict toward Reconciliation.”

Lawson said he was excited that the best candidate, not just the black candidate, won the election, and he thought King would have felt the same way.

“I think Dr. King would be, number one, pleased that such a man had come and been elected by the nation,” Lawson said in an interview before last night's speech. “He would have also been cautious and realized the president has a lot to do to achieve an administration equal to his own record.”

That there is a celebration of King's life, Lawson said to the crowd, reflects some of the positive change America has experienced in the last 40 years. Lawson said at the time of King's death, he was the “most hated man in America.”

“Isn't that a tremendous reversal?” he said to the crowd. “His name now represents a holiday.”

But despite that and other achievements such as desegregation and the election of a black president, Lawson said the country is far from where it should be. In his speech, he apologized for not passing a better America to the next generation.

“We have given you a nation that has lost its way,” he said. “The task of this nation is by no way complete.”

Lawson pointed to abuse among families and against women, along with global violence and the way Americans speak to each other as significant societal hurdles.

“We have to change the way we talk to each other,” he said. “You cannot afford to use language of hurt and demonization.”

The country needs a new “nonviolent revolution” to overcome those challenges, he said, adding that the basic principles of nonviolence -- compassion and love -- would still be necessary in that movement.

His call for compassion resonated more than any others with Naaborko Sackeyfio, a professor of African history at Dartmouth, who also attended a luncheon with Lawson before the speech.

“I think compassion is one of those ideals that anyone can have,” she said. “Those ideals are powerful ones.”

The struggles suffered by people like Lawson and King, Sackeyfio said, helped make the roads to success for her and other black people much easier.

“Because of those people,” she said, “myself and many others have been able to achieve what we've achieved.”

Without question, Lawson said, those years of persecution and suffering were worth it to him.

“Hard work and suffering and sacrifice,” he said, “are the essential ingredients for the forming of character.”

Lawson, who celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday, said that character grew from his childhood and was supported by loving parents who never wavered.

“What do you need to know about James Lawson?” Dartmouth College Chaplain Richard Crocker said in Lawson's introduction. “He's a man who’s been committed to nonviolence since his youth.”

In fact, Lawson seemed destined for a life fighting injustice since before he was born. He's the great-grandson and grandson of slaves who escaped to Canada, and he's the son of a preacher.

“Early on, I knew who I was,” he said. “I have no doubt that came out of my family.”

From the beginning of his career, Lawson, now a pastor in Los Angeles, paired Christian teachings with those of Gandhi. Lawson spent three years in the mid-1950s as a missionary in Nagpur, India, while studying Hindu tactics to protest injustice, until he read an article on Dec. 6, 1955, in a local newspaper about King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

In 1956, he returned to America, and soon after, he met King at a luncheon at Oberlin College, where Lawson was studying theology. By the end of the dinner, King asked Lawson to join the Civil Rights movement in the South. Lawson said he would have eventually, but when King told him, “We need you now,” Lawson agreed and later dropped out of the school.

For the next 11 years, the two men organized sit-ins, strikes and protests against segregation in dozens of Southern towns. Lawson said he was arrested more times than he could remember and faced constant and sometimes violent opposition, but his commitment to nonviolent action never wavered.

In the spring of 1968, Lawson invited King to Memphis because of a sanitation workers strike. On April 4, King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel.

“They were and are truly soul mates,” Crocker said. “They were two different personalities on the same quest.”

Dartmouth history major Catherine Emil said she attended the event because she wanted to hear about Lawson's relationship with King and because Lawson himself was an inspirational historical figure.

“I loved it,” she said, adding that she would like to see more nonviolent movements, like those Lawson described, in American society.

Young people like Emil, Lawson said, are critical needed for change, and despite sometimes describing a bleak portrait of the country, he said this society's best trait is its resilience.

“The greatness of this people is that we have not yet achieved the America we want,” he said, “but we haven't given up.”

John Woodrow Cox can be reached at 603-727-3305 or jcox@vnews.com.