John Lewis was the youngest member of the “Big Six”, that included Martin Luther King Jr. A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer, Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins. He helped organized and lead the march on Washington, and spoke on that iconic day.
He was born in Troy, Alabama in 1940, and was 11 years old when he first saw how a desegregated society could look like when he went to visit relatives in Buffalo, NY.
He met MLK Jr AND Rosa Parks when he was 18, and attended workshops let by Reverend James Lawson on nonviolent protesting while a student in Nashville. That was the beginning of him following their example, and getting into “good trouble”, and becoming a Civil Rights Leader.
This led to the Nashville Student Movement which began staging sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in 1959.
He was one of the original Freedom Fighters who rode interstate buses to protest segregation in the south. He was assaulted and arrested over 2 dozen times in the years between 1961 and 19631234-.
He was one of many protestors that walked over the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965. He suffered a fractured skull, and many other demonstrators were hospitalized following the assault of baton-wielding police. This was referred to as “Bloody Sunday”, and the televised images may have spurred President Johnson to submit a voting rights bill to congress.
He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981, where he lived with his wife Lillian and his son John-Miles.
He was elected to the US House of Representatives from Georgia’s 5th district in 1986, and was reelected SIXTEEN times as “the conscience of Congress”, according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
He introduces a bill to create a national African American museum in 1988, which is blocked 15 successive years by the Republican Senate. The bill passes in 2003, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture officially opened in 2016 in DC, affectionately called Blacksonian.
He continues to sit-in, calling for immigration reform in front of the Capitol in 2013. This leads to his 45th arrest, for getting into “Good Trouble”.
He leads a sit-in on the House floor in 2016 when the vote on gun control is refused by Republicans.
He endorses Barack Obama, who in turn delivers his eulogy when he dies with pancreatic cancer in 2020, saying:
“He, as much as anyone in our history, brought this country a little bit closer to its highest ideals.”
Chronology from Carry On, his last book. It may be small, but it carries big messages, just like the Congressman did.
CBC GEM has a documentary called Good Trouble, that is worth watching.
He wrote a graphic novel trilogy called March, a memoir called Walking with the Wind, and Across that Bridge.
Read about John Lewis, and you can’t help but be inspired.
