Congressman John Lewis, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement’s most pivotal battles, served Georgia with unwavering dedication. His lifelong commitment to ‘good trouble’ was inspirational. His death in 2020 left many Americans yearning for his principled leadership and his relentless pursuit of equality.
Since he was a teenager, John Lewis (1940-2020) worked to create a more equal world for all Americans. During nonviolent civil protests, he was the victim of police beatings, and he was jailed more than 40 times fighting for civil rights.
In 1986, he was elected to Congress, representing the 5th Congressional district of Georgia. He spent the rest of his life defending the crucial gains he helped achieve.
In 2016-2017, John Lewis, working with co-authors Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, wrote a graphic novel, March, documenting his participation in the civil rights movement. (The term “graphic novel” describes nonfiction work presented in a comic book format.) In it, he left many messages for all of us today.
Table of contents
March, Three-Volume Trilogy
After reading all three volumes of the graphic novel in succession, I was struck by the enormity of the ongoing effort that is required of the civil rights workers. When we think of the lunch counter sit-ins, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Riders, or the March on Washington, we forget that the protests were not isolated, single events. These actions were ongoing in many parts of the country.
In reading John Lewis’s story–from his home on his family’s Alabama sharecropper farm to his eventual leadership roles in civil rights organizations– one is struck by the unrelenting pace and the constant push that was necessary in order to fight for equal rights.
The Story: How Lewis Became Active
John Lewis was a teenager when he first heard Martin Luther King, Jr. on a radio broadcast. He was so inspired that he wrote him a letter and asked for a meeting. King said yes. In that meeting, John Lewis found his purpose. Though he was a shy young man, he knew he had to get involved politically.
He attended college in Nashville, and so it was in Tennessee where he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This was a grassroots student organization that began in 1960 and contributed significantly to expanding voting rights and challenging segregation.
The Nashville SNCC group planned nonviolent sit-in protests at segregated lunch counters in and around Nashville.
Students were outraged at the fact that they could spend their money in Nashville department stores, but they couldn’t eat at the store lunch counters or use the dressing rooms or bathrooms in these places.
Lunch Counter Sit-Ins
To prepare for these sit-ins to be non-violent, the students practiced receiving the type of treatment they knew to expect. They practiced taunting and verbally abusing each other. Those receiving the abuse rehearsed not responding. They wanted to present calm under duress.
Once SNCC undertook the demonstrations at lunch counters around Nashville, the process was long and slow. The students scheduled visits at lunch counters throughout town. The protesters repeated this process again and again.
They endured a barrage of abuse: they were spat upon, screamed at, struck, and hauled away in handcuffs. In one harrowing incident, a restaurant owner abandoned the students at the counter, plunging them into darkness, locking the doors, and unleashing a cloud of insecticide. Trapped and choking, the students feared for their lives.
No matter what terrible things befell them, the activists kept returning to stand up for their rights.
Change Came Slowly
On May 10, 1960, the students achieved a victory.
After six months of steady, nonviolent protests, six downtown Nashville department store lunch counters finally agreed to serve food to black customers.
Success was welcome, but the enjoyment was fleeting. The next challenge was to integrate movie theaters. The students started again.
Protests Throughout the South
The protests in Tennessee tell a story about just one small part of the country. There were efforts being made to integrate all types of institutions in Southern states—Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama to name a few.
By 1961, John Lewis was leader of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. That year the group undertook the racial discrimination taking place in interstate bus travel. (See the story about Sarah Keys Evans.) In 1955, the Interstate Commerce Commission handed a victory to Sarah Keys Evans and her attorney Dovey Roundtree.
The decision from the ICC, based on Roundtree’s legal argument, was that bus lines could not draw color lines no matter what part of the country they traveled. Yet nothing changed. The Jim Crow laws were still carried out bus driver-by-bus driver.
In 1961, John Lewis and SNCC as well as other civil rights groups organized what was called the Freedom Ride—all to make the case that discrimination was illegal on interstate transportation. Freedom Riders were beaten and jailed for prolonged periods of time. Buses were burned, and some protesters were killed in their stand for justice. Eventually they brought about change.
Freedom Summer 1964
When the voting rights fight moved to Mississippi in what was known as Freedom Summer (1964), John Lewis writes in March that the civil rights workers suffered 1000 arrests, 80 beatings, 35 shootings, 35 church burnings, and 30 bombings.
The volunteers who returned home from the summer frequently described symptoms that were like PTSD—-called “battle fatigue” then.
Selma to Montgomery for Voting Rights
By the mid-1960s, John Lewis was nationally known, included in what was referred to as the Big Six of civil rights leaders of the time. He was among the organizers of what was to be an orderly march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital, Montgomery, to campaign for voting rights. It was March of 1965; one of their protesters, a preacher, had been murdered the previous month so there was fear.
A peaceful march was planned, and the entire group knelt to pray before crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr., were among the participants. The march began in peace but by the time the group reached the Edmund Pettus bridge just outside Selma, they were attacked by state troopers using billy clubs and tear gas.
The attacks on the marchers were so violent that it became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Lewis was among those seriously injured, suffering a fractured skull.
The news coverage of what the police turned into a violent and bloody incident received worldwide coverage.
Another Effort
Two days later, another March was scheduled. That one, too, was halted. When they stopped, Martin Luther King Jr. led them all in prayer. The world saw that America had not become a place with equal rights after all.
Six days later, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the public on television pledging his commitment to a new voting rights act: “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem,” Johnson said, “Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negros, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”
That autumn, in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act.
Even today the defense of this right must continue. Our voting rights are still under attack. No one knew more about this than John Lewis.
Lewis in Politics
Lewis did not run for elective office until 1981 when he was joined to the Atlanta City Council. In 1986, he was elected to represent Georgia’s fifth district and served as a prominent member of Congress until his death in July of 2020.
In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded him the Medal of Freedom.
The Message from John Lewis and March
Today with unrest throughout the country, I highly recommend reading John Lewis’s March. The leaders of the civil rights movement have lessons for us about what it takes for people to stand up for their rights and bring about change.
As former President Barack Obama wrote when he heard that John Lewis died: “We all now have our marching orders—to keep believing in the possibility of remaking this country we love until it lives up to its full promise.”
Obama noted that in his final phone call with Lewis that John Lewis was proud of the young leaders today who are stepping forward to lead nonviolent protests and to run for political office and continue the long march to justice.
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And if you want to be inspired by other Black leaders, read about World War II hero Dorie Miller, inventor Marie Van Brittan Brown, the Mongomery Bus Boycott, the women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the Harlem Hellfighters, or the black paratroopers in World War II who trained themselves in order to be prepared to fight for their country. The list is long and illustrative of the many great Americans whose stories have not been told often enough.