John Lewis, An American Patriot

I am old enough that the word hero is sort of a relative term for me. Until sports came along those that I may have looked at in my youth as being heroic were mostly fictional characters, for example the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, and the sergeant played by Vic Morrow on combat. Later as with a lot of other boys I became fixated on sports. In a time that seems simpler only through the lens of misty memory, I followed Ernie Banks and Billy Williams and Ron Santo, Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers. Later in life, sports figures as heroes became somewhat oxymoronic.

Michael Jordan had the sweetest shot and a will to win that was not to be denied. Those games at the garden were legend, but by the time they occurred the concept of hero had become tangled in my mind. Jordan could create magic but there were elements to him that do not strike me as particularly heroic in the same way for example one might consider Roberto Clemente who went down in a plane in 1972 delivering earthquake relief to Nicaragua. Still, in sports, on the field and off, there are lives to look at that are nothing less than inspiring if not wholly heroic. It cannot be denied that Magic Johnson brought some of the heroic to his life, simply by surviving his battle with AIDS for so long, showing others that they could do it too, all the while with that brilliant, charismatic smile.  His game it should not be forgotten was something of a joy to behold.

But when it comes heroes who I am to judge anyway? No life is pure, certainly not mine, and why do we need heroes anyway? What is it in us (What is it in me?) that makes us yearn for pure acts of selflessness as something aspire to, something even to hunger for? Why now even in the firm grip of middle age does the concept of heroism still cause me to tally those I have had, knowing so well now how I have been misled but also how I have misjudged. I sometimes think that we grasp for heroes only because there is something in us that is not all it should be. I think I should be more. I think I should do more. Is that desire for the heroic all just as simple as a salve to my conscience to know that others carry a bright banner even as endeavor to complete the simple but sometimes distressing tasks of making house payments and getting the car fixed?

I bring all this up because I was catching up on some TIVO recordings from the last few weeks on Friday and my wife and I watched a segment of the truly amazing Henry Louis Gates PBS show, “Finding Your Roots”.   Every week Gates profiles two people of some notoriety, sometimes, celebrities, sometimes not, and with seemingly unlimited genealogical, archeological, and genetic resources helps them to follow their family tree. Race is often a factor, but the element that catches my interest most often on that subject is the incredible polyglot of American ancestry. It is well known that there are deep and abiding strains of white DNA in the ancestral bloodlines of many African Americans, but less well known is the complex racial makeup of many of those who consider themselves simply “white”. Gates follows each family tree in minute detail and in doing so he inevitably tells us something about who we are and the nature of the American family tree. With wonder and affection Gates sometimes exposes misunderstandings about complex family history. When he asks a guest to “turn the page”, I often find myself longing for a family history of my own which I might open with similar anticipation.  The show I viewed on Friday included Corey Booker, the young and dynamic Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and John Lewis.

John Lewis is a Congressman serving the 5^th Congressional District, which covers Atlanta and much of its surrounding communities. As a Congressman he is a member of the Progressive Caucus, and so by definition he would be one of the 78 to 81 members of Congress that Allen West identified as communists. John Lewis has been in Congress since 1986.

In 1958, at the age of eighteen, Lewis wrote a letter to Dr. King, was summoned to Montgomery, and soon thereafter became a central actor in the civil rights movement. West’s claim was not the first time Lewis would be accused of being a communist. In 1961 Lewis joined the Freedom Rides, along with other young, idealistic patriotic. Lewis was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders. In the spirit of the declaration of independence “All men are created equal” the goal was to break the grip of Jim Crow and integrate interstate bus transportation. As FBI and other federal observers watched and took notes, the 13 were beaten mercilessly. Yet many Americans believed or claimed the Civil Rights movement was a front for the Communist party. That would include the then Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.

Later, Lewis would sit in at lunch counters with contemporaries such as James Bevel, James Forman, Diane Nash, and others. In city after city after city they challenged Jim Crow laws, winning small victories in service and hiring. American history records well the names of great leaders whether they be Lincoln or Roosevelt or Kennedy. They are central to the American story. But Lewis and Bevel and Forman and Nash represent something greater in my view. Their stories are those of average citizens exercising their constitutional rights bearing moral witness to the cruelty in the American soul, until the average citizen  could look away no longer and change had to come. Their victories are in ways more profound even than military battles such as Okinawa or D-Day. While it can be argued that America may not exist without those critical military victories, one has to wonder what we would be without the essential  moral victories in Montgomery and Nashville and Birmingham and Selma. Lewis, Bevel, Forman, and Nash were not born to greatness but there was greatness in them. We Americans are who we are because of them.  

In 1963, Lewis was elected Chairmen of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. By that time he had already been arrested 24 times for leading or participating in non-violent protest. He helped plan the March on Washington, made a fiery speech which caused some controversy due to its militancy—far more than Dr. King—and continued on from there to Selma where he along with hundreds of others was beaten on the Edmond Pettus bridge.

John Lewis is a giant of the Civil Rights movement. He would later leave SNCC, which headed in an a more militant direction under the leadership of H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael both of whom would later join the Black Panther Party. The slow pace of change in race relations and especially effective legislation combined with the death of many leaders, most notably Dr. King, caused rifts in the Civil Rights movement that severely tested the commitment to Non-Violence for which Lewis always stood. When Lewis left on 1966 calls for self-defense against the racist treatment protestors were receiving were growing by the day. Escalation in Vietnam was also taking place and Non-Violence as a tactic was under assault.

Lewis became a community organizer (a term Sarah Palin bandied about with ignorant vitriol). He was elected to the Atlanta City Council, and the US House Of Representatives. When others flamed out in bitterness, Lewis who had more reason than any to do so, stood strong, committed to the principle of democratic constitutional government. While it is easy from the perch of today to criticize Stokely Carmichael, one can also picture him walking side by side with Dr. King in Mississippi and dozens of other places in favor of civil and voting rights. The mystery is not that some would leave the non-violent movement, especially in the aftershocks of the Vietnam War which claimed to be in the name of Freedom for the South Vietnamese all the while taking a disproportionate share of black lives. The miracle really is that John Lewis and others chose to stay committed to the path, even and especially after the assassination of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy in 1968.

John Lewis is a hero to me. Towards the end of Gates adventure through Lewis’ family tree, he asks him to “turn the page” one last time. We have already been informed that Lewis the son of sharecroppers in Pike County Alabama. Movingly Gates and his team have pieced together the story that Lewis’ ancestors were slaves there in Pike County, and once freed were married almost immediately. We are told that this was not uncommon in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, as asserting familial rights was a common first step for freed slaves previously prevented from forming such attachments. Watching, I recall thinking how extraordinary that Lewis would spring up in the same community where his ancestors were slaves. I guess it would not be that extraordinary that he and his large family would still be there in Pike County, so much as somehow he found something in him to break free of it. Then Gates drops the hammer. The last document, the one Lewis has just “tuned the page” to see is a voter registration sheet. Lewis’s ancestors in addition to getting married as soon as humanly policy in the aftermath of Emancipation also registered to vote at the earliest practical date, in 1867. That “right” to vote, the most deeply held and critical American right was held by blacks in the South until the 1880’s when Jim Crow slowly took hold. Lewis’s family in the greatest American tradition exercised their rights as soon as long as they could, and then it was taken away. Lewis, God bless him, along with tens of thousands of people of good will got it back.

The America we live in today is a direct result of the bravery and commitment of John Robert Lewis. His is now 72 years old. Let it be that he lives to be 100.