Category: History

John Lewis taught us – and his legacy continues to teach us – about using our voice to mobilize support for those in harm’s way, about responding bravely and with conviction in the face of injustice, and about integrity, remaining steadfastly peaceful and nonviolent while fighting for a cause. Whether as the (grand)son of sharecroppers on a cotton farm in rural Alabama or as the young boy who knew there was something wrong with “Whites Only” and “Coloreds Only” signs or as the teenager who felt Emmett Till could’ve been him or as the aspiring preacher who waged countless sit-ins in Nashville or as one of the 13 original Freedom Riders who refused to let a fractured skull stop him from continuing to challenge segregated interstate bus transportation or as the Chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who prioritized the empowerment of young Black southerners or as the youngest member of the “Big Six” leaders of the historic March

John Lewis served Georgia’s 5th Congressional District for 17 distinguished terms, from 1987 until his passing in 2020. He was the second Black American to be elected to Congress from Georgia since Reconstruction and the only former major civil rights leader to continue his fight for justice in the halls of Congress. Despite representing the most Democratic district in Georgia and being among the most liberal members of Congress, Lewis was known for bridging political divides. Since his first sit-in in Nashville, his overarching goal was to create a “beloved community” rooted in equity and inclusion. “It begins inside your own heart and mind, because the battleground of human transformation is really, more than any other thing, the struggle within the human consciousness to believe and accept what is true… to truly revolutionize our society, we must first revolutionize ourselves. We must be the change we seek if we are to effectively demand transformation from others.” Until the end, John

The 250,000-person March on Washington was a resounding success, so most critics fell silent after the event. All the more reason to identify and reflect on the opposition that tested the moral courage and steely conviction required to pull off such a risky venture during such a volatile time in U.S. history. Leading up to the March, President Kennedy was supportive, publicly. Behind the scenes, his administration feared the event would incite violence that would erode public support for the Civil Rights Movement and undermine Congressional support for the Civil Rights Act, which he had introduced on June 11. He knew that many Congressional members were looking for any excuse to vote NO. Opposition came from within the movement, too. Malcolm X felt the event had been hijacked by white liberals and become a symbol of “integration” versus an expression of genuine Black frustration with racial inequality. And Stokely Carmichael wasn’t the only member of SNCC, which Lewis became Chairman

Founded in 1960, SNCC focused on empowering young people, primarily Black college students, in nonviolent direct-action against Jim Crow segregation and racial inequality in the South. During Lewis’s tenure as Chairman, 1963-1966, SNCC led or collaborated on numerous campaigns and actions, including: March on Washington (1963): 23-year-old Lewis was the youngest organizer of the 250,000-person March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. By then, he was also the youngest member of the “Big Six” leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, along with Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young. After MLK Jr delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Lewis gave a powerful speech of his own, calling for immediate action on civil rights legislation. (Tomorrow’s post will focus on this event.) Voter Registration Drives: SNCC trained a new generation of civil rights activists to focus primarily on Mississippi and Alabama, where Black voters faced the most barriers and intimidation. SNCC volunteers

On May 4, 1961, 13 passengers – including 21-year-old seminary student John Lewis – boarded two buses in Washington, DC, bound for New Orleans. Their goal? Challenge and expose state laws that continued to enforce segregation on buses and in bus terminals despite the 1960 Boynton v. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the segregation of interstate travel. This was the first Freedom Ride organized by CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). Their first confrontation with violent segregationists took place in Rock Hill, South Carolina. As the Freedom Riders tried to enter a “whites-only” waiting room in Rock Hill’s Greyhound terminal, John Lewis and others were assaulted by a mob of young white men. The violence escalated further on a highway outside Anniston, Alabama, when one of the Freedom Ride buses was firebombed. When the Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus, they were attacked by a mob of white segregationists. John Lewis was also on the Freedom Ride from Birmingham to

After graduating in 1957 from a segregated high school in rural Alabama, John Lewis moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he graduated from American Baptist Theological Seminary in 1961 and was ordained as a Baptist minister. Two years later, he earned a BA in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University. Lewis’s plans of becoming a Baptist minister were derailed, however, by his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville. But his religious studies certainly didn’t go to waste. Discussing the religious, ethical and tactical basis of nonviolent civil disobedience with fellow students Jim Lawson, Diane Nash, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and later-to-become DC’s Mayor Marion Barry, grounded Lewis’s activism in his Christian faith and love. Rev. James Lawson trained students from Nashville’s four Black colleges in the philosophy and tactics of nonviolent direct-action. Soon, Lewis was among nearly 500 students waging nonviolent sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and filling the jails of Nashville with their freedom songs. Sometimes, they would

Seeds of John Lewis’s activism can be traced back to his early childhood near the town of Troy in rural Alabama. Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, and raised with nine siblings on a cotton farm where his parents and siblings and, earlier, his grandparents worked long hours for little pay as sharecroppers – in the early 1940s, the average sharecropper family’s income was less than 65 cents a day. As a child, Lewis could tell things weren’t right from the omnipresent “Whites Only” signs on the nicer drinking fountains, restrooms, waiting rooms, hotels, telephone booths, restaurants, and cemeteries – not to mention the “Whites Only” sections of buses, movie theaters, and neighborhoods – and segregated schools. Segregation was so ingrained in Alabama that Bibb Graves, Governor of Alabama from 1927 to 1931 and 1935 to 1939, was the Grand Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan when he was elected. Lewis was 15 when he was first inspired by

Let’s get one thing straight at the top: the Black Panther Party wasn’t just about the coalition of cool; leather jackets, berets, and the thunderclap of raised fists. That image crackled with defiance, but the truth beneath it was even more radical and electric. The Panthers weren’t a costume or a slogan, they were a vital lifeline, a bold resistance forged not from fantasy, but from necessity. They rose not out of abstraction, but out of hunger. Out of sirens and evictions. Out of a mother’s fear and a child’s empty bowl. Founded in 1966 in Oakland by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party didn’t crawl out of the fringe, fists clenched in blind rage. On the contrary, these were students of struggle, descendants of the Great Migration, raised on both Bible verses and broken promises. They were organizers with calloused hands and soft hearts. They were children of neglect who grew into caretakers of their communities.