By Chris Otaigbe
Ten years after he joined the movement demanding for equal rights and justice for African Americans in America, in March 1965, 25-year-old John Lewis stood with Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders as they led peaceful protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. That historic march would take them to Montgomery, the state capital, to demand equal voting rights. Considering its current President, Donald Trump’s White Supremacist tendencies and his trumped-up lies about some mail voting scam, Lewis struggle for the liberation of the African American from racism remains a deeply polarizing problem in the United States as he, metaphorically, lies at the foot of the bridge of the struggle.
Inspired by Martin Luther King Jnr’s struggle for the rights of the Black man in America, 15-year-old John Lewis wrote to join the movement. Martin Luther King accepted and invited him to be part of the protest marches and from then on, young Lewis became the youngest voice at rallies held by the Legendary Luther King for the emancipation of the Black American in the United States. Sixty-five years of carrying on the legacies of Luther King, Lewis ensured he mainstreamed Martin Luther King’s struggle into modern-day America such that successive generations saw the power and purity of the agenda, the Progenitor laid for the freedom, justice and equality for the African American.
Lewis was one of the “Big Six” Civil Rights leaders, which included Martin Luther King Jr, and helped organize the historic 1963 March on Washington. His death, on 17th July 2020, at 80, became an opportunity to remind young African Americans, especially those running the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that the foundation for the success of their struggle, today, had been laid long before they were born.
Flowing from Floyd’s injustice, the explosion of the BLM all over America and the entire world has further justified the strength of that fact. Preaching a message of non-violence alongside Dr Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis forged his legacy as a lifetime champion for civil rights and racial equality during the struggles of the 1960s.
Lewis was born on 21st February 1940, to a family of sharecroppers in the small Southern town of Troy, Alabama, during the time of Jim Crow laws. From an early age, he had always been obsessed about books and that obsession was expressed through his love for learning.
Lewis, one of 10 children, would spend hours upon hours at his local library, which became the place, from where he located African-American publications that would bolster his commitment to the struggle for civil rights. “I loved going to the library, it was the first time I ever saw black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I’ll never forget my librarian,” he said.
His life had long been actively shaped by the battle for racial equality before he became an activist. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Brown vs Board of Education, striking down more than 50 years of legalized racial segregation, in 1954, when Lewis was only 13.
Forced by Alabama’s commitment to segregation, Lewis left the state to attend college. After the School Desegregation Law had been passed, Alabama, along with many other states, fought the decision and delayed implementation of school desegregation. Lewis’ school was one of the many schools that remained segregated despite Brown. In other words, Alabama school’s segregationist stance buried Lewis’ desire to attend the nearby, all-white Troy State University and study for the ministry, because it meant he would never be accepted.
In the end, though, Lewis made the decision to attend the predominantly African-American institution, the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, since it allowed students to work for the school in lieu of tuition. During his first year in Nashville, as the fight against segregation continued, Lewis, again, attempted to transfer to Troy State.
Characteristic of such segregationist schools to ignore applications of African-Americans instead of formally accepting or denying them, they never responded to Lewis application.
Frustrated by Troy State’s lack of response, Lewis wrote a letter to King describing his dilemma. In response, Luther King sent him a round-trip bus ticket to Montgomery so they could meet.
This meeting would commence Lewis’ relationship with King and his lifelong leadership in the struggle for civil rights. After consulting King, he, eventually, decided to end his desperation to be a student at Troy State University.
In all of Lewis’ Troy State University obsession and persistent passion to challenge Jim Crow laws, Lewis’ parents feared their son would be killed, and their land was taken away.
He would later return to Nashville, where he graduated from the seminary, after which he proceeded to earn a Bachelor of Arts in religion and philosophy.
Beaten and bloodied, Lewis would have been killed, when he was attacked by a mob of white men at a bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina, for attempting to enter a waiting room marked “Whites”, in May 1961. Yet, he remained resolute and fired up to continue the cause for equality and justice for all, Black, White, Latino, in America.
Following the beating by angry mobs, the arrest and the jail time they served, for sitting or standing next to white people on buses and in bus terminals, in the Deep South, some of Lewis’ co-Freedom Riders dropped out of the struggle due to the violence and terror, but Lewis continued all the way to New Orleans.
Spurred by the election of President Barack Obama, Elwin Wilson, a former Klansman who attacked Lewis admitted to his hateful acts and asked Lewis for forgiveness. And so, in reuniting with his Rock Hill Black victim, in 2009, he extended an open hand and a request for forgiveness, to Lewis, instead of a clenched fist.
“I said if just one person comes forward and gets the hate out of their heart, it’s all worth it, I never dreamed that a man that I had assaulted, that he would ever be a congressman and that I’d ever see him again,” said Wilson. “He was very, very sincere, and I think it takes a lot of raw courage to be willing to come forward the way he did, I think it will lead to a great deal of healing.”
Edmund Pettus Bridge crosses the Alabama River in the state’s town of Selma. And it was the bridge upon which Lewis led hundreds of protesters on a peace march to Montgomery in 1965. On that bridge and on that day, State troopers attacked them and left Lewis with a broken skull on what became known as Bloody Sunday.
Named after a Confederate general and later Ku Klux Klan leader in Alabama, he walked across the bridge, in 2015, with then-President Barack Obama, America’s first black president, fifty years later. Today, a petition on change.org cites the recent movement to remove statues and monuments to the Confederate past in the wake of the death in police custody of African American George Floyd.
“As we wipe away this country’s long stain of bigotry, we must also wipe away the names of men like Edmund Pettus,” the petition argues.
Released to wide acclamations in 2014, the film ‘Selma’ depicted the events of Lewis’ historic march across the Bridge. “It is a rare honour in this life to follow one of your heroes, and John Lewis is one of my heroes,” said Obama at the 50th-anniversary celebration.
Having been inspired by the 1958 comic book ‘Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story’, as a young activist, Lewis co-created the three-part graphic novel March. It was a vivid memoir of his lifetime of civil rights advocacy and it went on to be a bestseller and award-winner.
To ensure those historic memories do not fade into the oblivion and to help acquaint a new generation of Americans with the fight for civil rights in the 1960s, Lewis hoped to inspire another generation of civil rights leaders through his own graphic novel.
“We are involved now in a serious revolution,” it says in March: Book Two, published in 2015. “This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, ‘My party is the party of principles?'” said Lewis.
Expressed in his boycott of Donald Trump’s inauguration, because of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Lewis never believed Donald Trump was America’s ‘legitimate president’ and had always demonstrated fierce opposition to policies and statements made by President Trump and his fellow Republicans.
Disturbed by the white supremacist rally and attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, Lewis repeated worries about the direction he felt the US was taking in 2017, after the white supremacist rally and attack in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“I am very troubled. I cannot believe in my heart what I am witnessing today in America. I wanted to think not only as an elected official but as a human being that we had made more progress. It troubles me a great deal,” he said.
The racist storms that have been roaring in Trump’s America never shook his conviction for a moment as he remained an undeterred and committed champion to the fight for civil rights and racial equality until his last breath.
US Presidents; past and present, and foreign leaders joined in paying tributes to the civil rights icon, who died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 80. Among those who have praised Lewis’s legacy, was Barack Obama who said Lewis lived to see his legacies. “Not many of us get to live to see our own legacy play out in such a meaningful, remarkable way. John Lewis did, and thanks to him, we now all have our marching orders – to keep believing in the possibility of remaking this country we love until it lives up to its full promise,” Barack Obama said.
George W Bush, Obama’s predecessor, said Lewis had worked “to make America a more perfect union”, while Bill Clinton described him as “the conscience of the nation.” Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter, noted that the former congressman had made an indelible mark on history through his quest to make America more just.
Typical of Trump, the President’s condolence was expressed via a tweet where he tweeted his sadness over the former congressman’s death. On the other hand, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president and Trump’s challenger in the coming November 2020 US Elections, Joe Biden, described Lewis as true one-of-a-kind, a moral compass, adding that he had spoken to Lewis in the days before his death.
“His voice still commanded respect and his laugh was still full of joy. Instead of answering our concerns for him, he asked about us. He asked us to stay focused on the work left undone to heal this nation,” he said.
Son of Lewis’ mentor and hero, Martin Luther King III, said John Lewis was a giant in terms of what he personified.
As Lewis goes home to his Maker, he has proceeded into his journey to eternal bliss and peace, grateful that the speech he made, 55 years ago, would become the rhetorical morale booster in the ongoing nationwide and worldwide protests over the brutal murder of George Floyd by the State Police.
“To those who have said, “Be patient and wait,” we have long said that we cannot be patient. We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now! We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again. And then you holler, “Be patient.” How long can we be patient? We want our freedom and we want it now. We do not want to go to jail. But we will go to jail if this is the price we must pay for love, brotherhood, and true peace,” he said.
Like a Prophet, Lewis, in the eighth paragraph of that memorable speech delivered on that bridge, spoke to the sad reality of the African America he spoke against then, 55 years down the decades, while his call for all to join the struggle, resonated across the ages.
“I appeal to all of you to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete. We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution. For in the Delta in Mississippi, in southwest Georgia, in the Black Belt of Alabama, in Harlem, in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and all over this nation, the black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom,” said Lewis.
Although a petition to rename a bridge in Alabama that played a pivotal role in Lewis’s life has generated more than 400,000 signatures, Lewis would feel more fulfilled if every African American begins to enjoy the same rights and access to Justice and State resources as his White counterpart.
Otherwise, his immortal instruction to Black Americans would remain, “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.”
