A longtime Bay Area Civil Rights activist and Richmond Black spiritual leader died Sunday at his Hercules home. He was 92.
The Rev. Phil Lawson served for decades at Richmond’s Easter Hill United Methodist Church and was a part of many organizations in west Contra Costa County where he advocated for racial justice, solutions to homelessness and immigration rights, working with groups such as East Bay Housing Organization (EBHO), Greater Richmond Interfaith Program (GRIP) and co-founding the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.
Lawson also marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery in March of 1965. He was subpoenaed by Congress for his ties with the Black Panther Party and controversial visits to North Vietnam. He was awarded as Contra Costa’s Humanitarian of the Year in 2003.
During his time with EBHO, Lawson was instrumental in building support among interfaith groups for the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in 2011 which saw large protests in Oakland.
In a 2013 newspaper Q&A interview, Lawson was described as a “prophetic and sometimes controversial voice for peace and social justice for many decades. He is, at one and the same time, a gentle pastor and an outspoken rebel.”
“Nonviolence is not necessarily just an option,” Lawson said in the article. “It’s the only way we are going to live together as a community, as a nation, as a world. Dr. King’s last book was entitled ‘Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?’ There are no third ways. It’s either chaos or community. And community is built upon compassion and nonviolence.”
Lawson was appointed to lead Easter Hill United Methodist Church in 1992 by the California Nevada United Methodist Conference. He previously served as a pastor in El Cerrito.
Richmond political hopeful Ahmad Anderson, son of former mayors the Rev. Booker T. Anderson and Irma Anderson, who both also served and attended Easter Hill United Methodist for many years, said the loss of Lawson is not just a loss for south Richmond but the entire Bay Area.
Lawson is the latest among several Richmond historic Black community leaders who have died. Irma Anderson died in January of 2024 and former Richmond city council member James McMillan died in November. Lawson’s older brother, James Lawson, who was also instrumental in the Civil Rights movement, died last June.
The losses, Anderson said, are from a generation of Black leaders who paved the way for himself and others to address “systemic” issues of racial and economic inequality while also inspiring the next generation.
“It’s a legacy for me to inspire future generations of activists and leaders in the Bay Area and the city of Richmond who are compassionate about a justice-driven society and being a beacon of championing (the movements) they start,” he said.
“His social justice work went well beyond Richmond, but he had a major impact here in the East Bay.”
— Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, on the death of Phil Lawson
Contra Costa County District 1 Supervisor John Gioia, whose district encompasses Richmond, San Pablo, Pinole, El Sobrate and El Cerrito, said Lawson officiated his wedding and that he often worked alongside him on projects which encompassed his passion for social justice work.
“His social justice work went well beyond Richmond, but he had a major impact here in the East Bay,” Gioia said. “I remember one of the first things that I worked with him on, over 20 years ago, was his leadership in addressing HIV and AIDS in the African American community.”
Gioia said Lawson’s community leadership brought attention to an issue that was, at the time in the late-1990s and early-2000s, not discussed.
“In his role as the pastor at Easter Hill, he helped bring together other African American ministers at a time when there was a denial by some in the faith community to address that issue,” he said, adding that they worked jointly on a county task force that facilitated needle exchange programs.
Lawson, Gioia said, was honored by the county for his role in the taskforce in 2002.
Outside of his social work, Gioia said Lawson was a spiritual leader who transcended religions and was instrumental in integrating the United Methodist Church.
“He was truly an interdenominational pastor who broke barriers within the United Methodist Church,” he said. “At a time when having a progressive African American pastors in their church, he was groundbreaking there as well.”
In Lawson’s newspaper interview he cited an Edwin Markham poem that was meaningful to him as a teen and said he carried it with him and read it when he needed “fortification.”
“They drew a circle that shut me out.
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took them in.”
Gioia said a funeral service for Lawson is expected to be held at the Easter Hill church in mid-February.
