On the Passing of John Lewis

John Lewis was a national treasure and living bridge from the 1960s civil rights era to the recent Black Lives Matter movement; his life spanned from being denied a library card during his youth in his segregated hometown of Troy, Alabama, to recently speaking out against the murder of George Floyd.

 

In DSHA's Tumultuous 1960s class I’ve sometimes wondered if I referenced him too many times, but he was a key driving force in so many instances — the lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington (he was the last living speaker), and perhaps most famously the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” march across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He was beaten almost to death, but the marchers' sacrifices inspired another march several weeks later, a 54-mile journey from Selma to Montgomery. His actions led the way to one of our most important laws that has ever been passed, the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

 

Several summers ago, Theology Faculty Lisa Metz organized a DSHA/Messmer/MUHS Civil Rights Pilgrimage that included students walking across the Pettus Bridge, and one of the many unfortunate cancellations due to COVID-19 was the pilgrimage planned for this current summer (hopefully it can happen in the near future).  

 

I stress in class that Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were certainly not the only leaders of the civil rights movement; John Lewis and other grassroots organizers like Stokely Carmichael and Fannie Lou Hamer are certainly prominent among those other leaders.  

 

Besides his longevity, one of the other things that set Congressman Lewis apart was his tremendous capacity to love, and how his expansive conception of love drove his commitment to human rights. In a 2013 On Being with Krista Tippett interview, he said the following: 

 

“When we went on the freedom ride, it was love in action. The march from Selma to Montgomery was love in action. We do it not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but it’s love in action. That we love our country, we love a democratic society, and so we have to move our feet.”

 

He often cited the African proverb, "When you pray, move your feet," seeing faith and social activism as existing side-by-side. 

 

His belief in redemption and capacity to forgive was unparalleled. A 2013 article, “Proof that love can conquer evil”, by Journalist Leonard Pitts, told the story of an aging former Klansman named Elwin Wilson who had just died. Wilson had helped beat a busload of Freedom Riders, but as an old man was troubled by the sins of his youth.

 

When asked by a friend, “If you died right now, do you know where you would go?”, he had concluded it would be “to hell”. Then he learned that one of the Freedom Riders he beat was now in Congress.

 

In 2009 Wilson contacted John Lewis and went to Washington, D.C. to ask forgiveness, which Lewis granted, and the two men wept together.   

 

Congressman Lewis led yearly commemorations of the "Bloody Sunday" march across the Pettus Bridge, and one of the proposals is to honor him by renaming the Edmund Pettus Bridge (Pettus was a Confederate general and member of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan), where Lewis and others were so badly beaten, in honor of John Lewis.

 

On Sunday morning tears filled my eyes as I watched his flag-draped casket cross the bridge one last time. I hope that civil rights pilgrimages in the very near future walk across a bridge renamed for John Lewis.