Civil rights icon John Lewis remembered for his passion, leadership
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WASHINGTON – For some, it was when Rep. John Lewis led the 24-hour sit-in in the U.S. Capitol to force a vote on gun control.
For others, it was the Georgia congressman’s surprise visit to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in March.
For another, it was the last-minute scramble to change parts of a speech Lewis would deliver at the 1963 March on Washington.
As the nation spends the next several days memorializing the civil rights giant with services in Alabama, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, close friends, mentees and congressional colleagues shared some of their favorite moments with Lewis – moments they say show his spirit and how he left a lasting mark.
Lewis was best known for his lifelong work helping register Black Americans to vote, fighting against discrimination and protecting the rights of Americans to vote. He was an advocate for social justice and believed people could change.
“He’s not changed his view in 60 years about the whole question of the goodness of man and working to change men’s hearts,” said Courtland Cox, also a veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Here are some of those memories.
A veteran of sit-ins
Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American in Congress, met Lewis 60 years ago at a meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Atlanta. The two later served decades together in Congress.
But one of his most vivid memories of his friend and colleague is from just a few years ago, when he decided to join a protest over the inaction on gun violence.
Rep. John Larson from Connecticut pressed Clyburn to join the Democratic protest over inaction on gun violence in the House chamber. Clyburn agreed, especially since he knew Lewis was on board.
It wasn’t a hard sell to join the 2016 protest led by his longtime friend and fellow civil rights veteran. Clyburn was asked to offer up the prayer before the sit-in.
“We all knelt down and some of us were able to get up rather quickly,’’ recalled Clyburn, 80. “The two of us took a little more time then the others to get up.”
In a surprise move, Democrats led by Lewis brought legislative business to a halt and triggered a chaotic, late-night showdown as they demanded a vote on gun control legislation. Dozens of Democrats took turns for 25 hours talking about gun violence and citing mass shootings. At one point, Lewis sat on the floor. Others followed.
“What is the tipping point? Are we blind? Can we see? How many more mothers, how many more fathers need to shed tears of grief before we do something?” Lewis had said.
During the overnight protest, Republicans, who controlled the House, shut off C-SPAN, which had been airing the lawmakers sitting in the well of the chamber. Democrats broke chamber rules and turned to social media to broadcast and summon colleagues.
“Y’all keep it going. … We’re on our way,’’ Clyburn said colleagues responded. “And to our surprise people from all over … pulled up on the grounds to the Capitol” for the midnight rally. “That was a pivotal night, a very good night.”
Clyburn said Lewis was the right person to be front and center. Sit-ins were in his wheelhouse.
“When people think of sit-ins, they think about John Lewis,’’ he said.
‘Hopes and dreams’
Courtland Cox, a veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, worked with Lewis as the organization sent armies of mostly college students to the South to register African Americans to vote.
Cox huddled with John Lewis, then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in a far corner inside the Lincoln Memorial.
Lewis and Cox, along with James and Mildred Forman, were revamping the speech Lewis was set to deliver that day at the 1963 March of Washington.
Outside, busloads of people arrived from across the country. Thousands waited on the National Mall. Speakers and celebrities took to the stage.
There had been calls for last-minute changes to Lewis’ speech. The day before some people, including local clergy and Kennedy administration officials, had objected to parts of his speech, including a reference to people marching across the South like Union General William Sherman.
There was resistance to changes. But some key organizers pushed for them to move ahead with the long-awaited march.
“We had to be very clear about what we were going to do and not do,’’ Cox remembered.
It was important for Lewis to stay focused on the mission. “He was representing the hopes and dreams of many Black people in the South,’’ Cox said.
With Forman hunched over a portable typewriter and banging on the keys, they rewrote. Lewis, in a dark suit and tie, headed to the stage with his three-paged single-spaced speech he had not rehearsed.
“He didn’t have time to really review,’’ Cox said. “He had to do it on the fly before 250,000 people and the nation.”
Cox is sure Lewis was a “bit nervous.’’ Who wouldn’t be? He was 23 years old, Cox, 22.
But, he said, “We had right on our side.”
More:Rep. John Lewis recalls the foundation of SNCC
‘He was not to be deterred’
Rep. Terri Sewell, the first black woman elected to Congress from Alabama, calls herself a “disciple” of Lewis and had worked with him on voting rights.
The call from Rep. John Lewis’ chief of staff, Michael Collins, came early the morning of March 1. Collins wanted to know if Sewell could help with arrangements for the civil rights legend to show up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge later that day in Selma.
Sewell was back at home for the annual commemoration of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. Lewis usually led a pilgrimage there, but because of his failing health it wasn’t clear if he would make it.
““Selma will welcome John with open arms,’’ she recalled telling Collins. “Let’s figure out how to make that happen.”
Later that day a police escort led the car carrying what Sewell called the “precious cargo’’ to the apex of the bridge.
Word spread. People peeked in the car clamoring to get a glimpse and maybe even a picture with Lewis.
The path was cleared, and with help Lewis climbed up on a stepladder to address the crowd. Sewell held on to Lewis with one hand and tried to record with the other. Lewis told them to keep the faith, keep their eyes on the prize.
“He was not to be deterred,’’ Sewell said. “He was as forceful then as he was on that bridge 55 years earlier. And in some ways, in that moment, you caught a glimpse of that kind of determination, the kind of strength and courage and bravery that this man has exhibited all his life. And we were also appreciative that he would want to be in Selma on the 55th anniversary. But isn’t that so like John?”
‘He didn’t miss a beat’
Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, volunteered for Lewis’ early congressional campaign and later worked with him to get out the vote.
It was 2016, and Campbell’s national civic engagement group was at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida to join students from the historically black college on a march to a polling site a mile from campus.
Students had invited Lewis, who along with Campbell, the president of the college and others marched that late morning in November. Afterward, Lewis stood on top of a truck and spoke to hundreds gathered.
“He was 76,’’ said Campbell. “And he didn’t miss a beat.”
Campbell said Lewis motivated the students. She said he never stopped reaching out to younger generations.
“He could have been in a whole lot of places,” she said. “But he came to this HBCU in Daytona Beach, Florida.”
More:‘Work is still unfinished’: Younger civil rights activists vow to continue work of Rep. John Lewis
‘The moral center’
Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, had worked with Lewis on civil rights and along with others boycotted an opening of a civil rights museum in Mississippi because President Donald Trump had been invited.
John Lewis had already received every award imaginable, Johnson thought. Still, the NAACP, one of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations, wanted to honor Lewis in February with the chairman’s award for his life’s work at their NAACP Image Awards, a star-studded glitzy affair in L.A.
Johnson said it made sense. Lewis was “the moral center of the civil rights movement.”
But Lewis wasn’t well enough to travel for the live show, so NAACP Chairman Leon Russell met with him in his congressional office in Washington, D.C., for a video interview. Johnson called to thank Lewis. That video aired during the show.
A few days after the awards show, Johnson joined hundreds at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate “Bloody Sunday,” when in 1965 Lewis and other protesters had been beaten by police.
To the surprise of many, Lewis, whose health was failing, made a brief appearance.
“Everyone was shocked,’’ said Johnson, who stood inches from Lewis and listened in awe as the congressman inspired the crowd.
“Despite his battle for his health, he still showed up one last time,” Johnson said. “His challenge to the crowd was, ‘We must vote like we’ve never voted before.’ ’’
Johnson said Lewis once again laid the groundwork for the next mission: the November election. “That’s a challenge for us still,” he said.
More:Rep. John Lewis recalls the foundation of SNCC
More:John Lewis boycotts opening of Mississippi civil rights museum because of Trump
‘No arrogance on his part’
Bernard Lafayette, a veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was Lewis’ college roommate 60 years ago at the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville.
Lafayette recalled long, late-night conversations between the two scholars on segregation and racism.
At the time, Lewis was already studying nonviolent demonstration tactics to challenge Jim Crow laws in the Deep South. He encouraged Lafayette to attend the workshops with him, pressing again and again as Lafayette initially resisted because of his personal workload.
“John convinced me to go to these workshops, and I got stuck,” Lafayette said with a chuckle. “That was it. That was the beginning of the journey for me.”
The roommates, along with other young students in Nashville, would become major players in the civil rights movement, participating in lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom Rides and later community organizing in Selma. Lafayette remembered Lewis’ preternatural leadership qualities during those early college years when he was elected to leadership positions ahead of elder classmates.
“He had a tremendous appeal to people. He didn’t go out of his way to do that,” Lafayette said. “He was quiet, in terms of his spokesmanship, but people had confidence that he had a sincerity. There was no arrogance on his part. He never put anybody else down. He had respect. People had confidence in him in terms of his leadership. That’s the thing that made the difference.”
More:Lawmakers push to make civil rights landmarks national monuments
‘We were a family’
Ernest Rip Patton, a Freedom Rider, met Lewis in the fall of 1960 when they attended nonviolent workshops in Nashville to prepare for the sit-ins.
It was midmorning on May 24, 1961 when Ernest Rip Patton, John Lewis and other civil rights activists boarded the Greyhound bus. They were among a group of Freedom Riders traveling from Montgomery, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, to protest segregation on public transportation.
It was a dangerous mission. The bus didn’t stop in some places along Highway 80 for fear of encountering the Ku Klux Klan.
“I always said, ‘Nashville was the battle to train us, but the Freedom Ride was the war,’’ recalled Patton, 80.
Patton and Lewis sat together near the front. Lewis would be the third to get off the bus in Jackson. Patton was the fourth.
Inside, Lewis would leave the lunch counter at the bus station to go to the whites-only bathroom. He was arrested. Patton and others were arrested at the whites-only counter.
Patton said the students out of Nashville were a tight group.
“We were a family,’’ he said. “It wasn’t that John was this superstar when I first met him. He was just John Robert Lewis to me. … That’s what I called him. I said, ‘I’m going to call you like your mama calls you when you did something wrong.’’’
Years later, Patton met up with Lewis and other members of Congress at a civil rights anniversary event and asked if he should address him as congressman Lewis.
“He said, ‘Don’t you ever call me Congressman Lewis. I’m John,” Patton said.
“I said: ‘No, you’re not John. You’re John Robert Lewis,’ and he started laughing.”
Contributing: Melissa Brown, Montgomery Advertiser
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