John Lewis

I was 12 years old in 1960. On a Friday night, I stayed up late to watch the Pierre Berton Show. His guest that night was John Howard Griffin, the author of Black Like Me. From my perch north of the border, I became interested in the American Civil Rights movement. I read Griffin's book. I read Martin Luther King's book, Why We Can't Wait. I read James Baldwin's book, The Fire Next Time. And, nine years later, I found myself, a student-teacher, in the public schools of North Carolina -- where kids were being bused from school to school in an effort to achieve some kind of racial balance. The community boiled.

It was during this time that I encountered the work and the passion of John Lewis. He was young, and a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He marched. He was beaten. And he spoke -- again and again. The Editorial Board of The New York Times writes this morning:

Representative John Lewis, who died Friday at age 80, will be remembered as a principal hero of the blood-drenched era not so long ago when Black people in the South were being shot, blown up or driven from their homes for seeking basic human rights. The moral authority Mr. Lewis exercised in the House of Representatives — while representing Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District for more than 30 years — found its headwaters in the aggressive yet self-sacrificial style of protests that he and his compatriots in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee deployed in the early 1960s as part of the campaign that overthrew Southern apartheid.

These young demonstrators chose to underscore the barbaric nature of racism by placing themselves at risk of being shot, gassed or clubbed to death during protests that challenged the Southern practice of shutting Black people out of the polls and “white only” restaurants, and confining them to “colored only” seating on public conveyances. When arrested, S.N.C.C. members sometimes refused bail, dramatizing injustice and withholding financial support from a racist criminal justice system.

In his final years, Lewis saw a raging bigot make it to the White House -- the very opposite of what he had fought for. But he did not stop fighting.

May he rest in peace. His truth goes marching on.

Image: The New York Times