Serving his country with distinction as an iconic civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman in Georgia’s 5th District from Jan. 3, 1987 to July 17, 2020, Rep. John Robert Lewis succumbed to pancreatic cancer but not before leaving a lifetime of service in pursuit of a more perfect union. After graduating American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, TN June 1, 1961, receiving his bachelor’s degree from Fisk University, Lewis joined the Freedom Riders in 1961, traveling from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, stopping in Birmingham AL, where he and his other Freedom Riders were bloodied with baseball bat wielding mobs. Birmingham didn’t stop Lewis from protesting two weeks later in Jackson, MS., where he was arrested, charged and convicted of disturbing the piece, spending 40 days in Mississippi State Penitentiary, before his release.
In 1963 Lewis took over from Charles McDew as head of the Student Nonviolent Organizing Committee [SNCC] where he eventually met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC] was organizing the March on Washington where King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Aug. 26, 1963. No one knew then that civil rights advocate President John F. Kennedy would be assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, taking steam out the civil rights movement. Lewis became one of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders part of King’s March on Washington, 25 years before he would run for Congress in Atlanta’s 5th District. Of all the things that distinguished Lewis from his peers, he was genuinely committed to a nonviolent approach to civil rights, staying in the tradition of Dr. King and his successor Rev. Dr. Ralph Abernathy.
Abernathy inherited the job, of course, after King’s April 4, 1968 assassination, something that could have changed Lewis’s commitment to the nonviolent civil rights movement. “He loved his country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise,” said former President Barack Obama today, remembering Lewis. “And through the decades, he not only gave all of himself to the cause of freedom and justice, but inspired generations that followed to try to live up to his example,” Obama said, asking if today’s civil rights protests resemble what Lewis stood for. Today’s civil right rights movement has been replaced by a more militant ideology, embodied in Black Lives Matter [BLM], the group founded in 2013 by Alica Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. BLM has more in common with the 1966 Black Panthers than King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Lewis “embraced the principles of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience as the means to bring about real change—understanding that such Rep. John Lewis battled tirelessly for civil rights inspired by a faith that humanity yearns to do what’s right,” said said Obama.” “Tactics had the power not only to change laws, but to change hearts and minds as well.” Obama awarded Lewis Feb. 15, 2011 the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. While Lewis was too sick to comment recently on the nationwide protests over Police Brutality related to George Floyd’s May 25 murder, Obma hinted that Lewis would not approve of the riots, looting and arson that deviated from the nonviolent message. Unlike the Black Panthers or now BLM, Lewis was part of a more genteel approach on civil rights, standing up for what’s right without tearing down American society.
Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) told 74-year-old President Donald Trump to “say nothing,” about civil rights icon John Lewis. “Rep. John Lewis was an icon of the civil rights movement, and he leaves and enduring legacy that will never be forgotten,” said White House Press Secretary Kaleigh McEnany, speaking for the president. Trump already issued a proclamation that the White House, federal buildings, military posts and U.S. embassies and consulates flags should be flown at half-mast. Why Bass would make Lewis’s death political is anyone’s guess. “Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing. Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family,” Trump said, prompting Bass to tell Trump to remain silent. “Your Press Secretary released a statement, leave it at that,” Bass told Trump, suggesting as president, he has no right to respond to Lewis’s death.
Leaders like Bass do not exemplify the legacy of John Lewis who worked his entire life for the Christian values embodied in King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. While Lewis certainly empathized with the outrage and street protests, he did not condone the violence and calls to de-fund the police or demand reparations for slavery to African Americans. Lewis’s approach to civil rights is what won so many legal battles for African Americans and other minorities from the U.S. government, as Obama said, to “live up to its promise” embodied in the country’s most sacred documents, the Jul 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence and Sept. 17, 1787 U.S. Constitution. “And its because he saw the best in all of use that he will continue, even in his passing, to serve as a beacon in that long journey toward as more perfect union,” Obama said. Today’s new civil rights approach seems just the opposite.
