John Lewis: His Fight, His Courage, His Impact

By: Jackson Quarles

Congressman John Lewis: His Fight, His Courage, and His Impact

On July 17, 2020, the world lost not only a towering man, but a towering figure of Civil Rights. We lost a man of courage, a man who was never afraid to speak his mind and stand up for injustice against anyone. We lost a man of power, a man who took to the streets to make sure justice was served and equality would be reached. A man of vision, a man who did not only see the world as what it was, but what it could be. We lost Congressman John Lewis, the Civil Rights icon and longtime advocate for all people. Though He is not here anymore, Congressman John Lewis always let it be known that the fight is not over and we must continue to thrive and grow.

John Robert Lewis was born in Troy, Alabama, on February 21, 1940, one of 10 children to Eddie and Willie Mae Lewis. From a young age, he had a dream of being a preacher. He was in charge of taking care of his family’s chickens and would practice sermons on them: “I preached to my chickens just about every night.” once said, Lewis. He attended segregated public schools in rural Pike County. As a teenager, he listened to radio broadcasts by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and news of the Montgomery bus boycott. His early years predated the significant impact on activism that would begin in the mid-1950s. When he was only a teen, John Lewis met Rosa Parks and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which led to an invitation to the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, TN. At this event, Lewis connected with several people such as Diane Nash, James Bevel, Jim Lawson, Bernard Lafayette, and C.T. Vivian who became leading lights of the civil rights movement.

“By the fall of ’58, my eyes were opening in many ways,” he wrote in his 1998 memoir “Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.” The Civil Rights movement was beginning to prosper. As a student at Fisk University in Nashville, he began organizing sit-in demonstrations at segregated lunch counters. The first sit-in was at Greensboro, N.C., at a lunch counter at Woolworth’s in February 1960. Others such as The Nashville activists were soon imitating the tactic, starting with lunch counters and continuing to other establishments, such as movie theaters. During these sit-ins, Lewis and others were beaten and called names, burned with cigarettes, and even once had fumigating machines turned on them; “ As if we aren’t human,” Lewis said. Through it all, he continued his fight for equality through non-violent acts. “What we found, as we pushed our protests deeper into the heart of segregated society,” Lewis wrote, “ our nonviolent actions were met with increasingly more violent responses.” Still, he did not give up, taking to more sit-ins and forever risking his life for the fight of equality.

On March 7, 1965, Lewis was again involved in a breakthrough in the Civil Rights movement. “In Selma, Lewis led a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge straight into a blockade set up by Alabama state troopers. The first nightstick came down on Lewis’s skull,” Remnick wrote in 2009. In his memoir, Lewis said that day was weird from the start. He describes the day with the words, “It was somber and subdued, almost like a funeral procession.” Lewis continued, “There were no big names up front, no celebrities. This was just plain folks moving through the streets of Selma.” Calling him “a personal hero,” Sen. John McCain described Lewis’ actions that day as exemplary of America’s most basic dreams. The day of violence, which became known as Bloody Sunday, was covered in newspapers across the country and broadcast on national news, outraging many Americans. That day, 68 individuals ended up in the hospital. John Lewis’ skull was fractured, and he bore scars on his head from this incident for the rest of his life. It wasn’t the first, nor the last time Lewis would be beaten. He often said he was arrested or jailed 40 times. Lewis and others possessed immense courage to walk across that bridge while knowing that the beatings imminent would be horrific. Lewis never backed down from a battle. He knew that if the day were a disappointment, they would win tomorrow. That is what he believed as he walked across that bridge. Bloody Sunday had a significant effect on the civil rights movement. On March 15, 1965, just eight days after watching the violence unfold, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented a bill to Congress that would become the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This outlawed discriminatory voting laws that had kept black people off the voting rolls and provided for federal examiners to oversee voter registration in areas where voting rights were endangered. The act additionally outlawed all discrimination based on race in the United States. For many years up until his death, Mr. Lewis would reenact the march across that bridge.

Lewis moved on to the Voter Education Project in 1970, and in 1977 made his first stab at electoral politics, running unsuccessfully for a House seat in Georgia. But, failure never stopped Lewis; he ran again for the House in 1986 and won, beating out fellow activist Julian Bond in Georgia’s 5th Congressional District. Lewis was still very active in the Civil Rights movement and continued to fight for what he believed. Lewis spent years pushing for a National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., introducing legislation every year until it finally passed in 2003. “Giving up on dreams is not an option for me,” he wrote when the museum opened in 2016. His impact on this country will never be forgotten. As years went on, he came to be seen as the living embodiment of the civil rights movement. Many awards came his way as well: a Lincoln Medal from Ford’s Theatre, a Preservation Hero award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, and the Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center, just to name a few. He also was portrayed by Stephan James in the 2014 movie “Selma.” Universities showered him with honorary degrees. In 2016, the U.S. Navy announced it was naming a ship, a replenishment oiler, after him.

Lewis was diagnosed with cancer at the end of 2019. His diagnosis of cancer led to an outpouring of support for our hero. In his final months, he was still speaking up for what is right in society. Following the death of George Floyd, he said, “The way this young man died, watching the video, it made me so sad. It was so painful. It made me cry. I kept saying to myself, how many more, how many more young black men will be murdered? That the madness must stop.” He continued, “and it was very moving, very moving to see hundreds and thousands of people from all over America, and around the world, take to the streets to speak up, to speak out, to get in what I call GOOD TROUBLE, but to get into it. Because of the actions of young and old, black, white, Latino, Asian American, and Native American, because people cried and prayed, people would never, ever forget what happened and how it happened.”

It was always the hope of Lewis to achieve more considerable change. For everyone to respect the dignity and worth of every human being, and it doesn’t matter the color, or their background, or whether they’re male or female, gay or straight. We must continue the decades-long fight for equity for a “More Perfect Union,” as we see across the country and world with the Black Lives Matter Movement. The torch has now been passed down to us. It will soon be up to a “New Generation of Americans” to continue to walk down the path that he did and prove our worth. We forever Thank Congressman John Lewis for His Fight, His Courage, and His Impact on everyone.

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