“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble,
and help redeem the soul of America.”
- John Lewis -
Perhaps the most well-known civil rights figure outside of Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis is known as “the icon of icons” by many who still applaud his accomplishments towards fighting for racial justice. Born in 1940 and raised during the Jim Crow era by two Alabama sharecroppers named Willie Mae Carter and Eddie Lewis, John Lewis was often told not to speak up against segregation.
As he was growing up, however, he witnessed and was deeply affected by many important events in the civil rights movement. In 1954, a landmark case known as Brown v. Board of Education resulted in the order to desegregate schools which excited Lewis initially, but his excitement soon faded away when he realized that the changes pursued would not be taking place at his school. At the time of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, Lewis disregarded his parents’ request and got involved with many civil rights protests and movements.
Against his mother’s wishes, Lewis enthralled himself in the civil rights movement, participating in many marches and demonstrations, which eventually led to his arrest. In 1961, white and Black students came together to organize peaceful protests on public transit. This group of students called themselves the Freedom Riders.
When they arrived at bus stops, the racially integrated group would walk right into White-only waiting areas. They faced many different forms of harassment, violent and nonviolent, and were arrested on multiple occasions. “We were beaten by members of the Klan,” recounted Lewis in a 2017 interview, “They beat us, left us lying in a pool of blood.” However, they stayed strong to prove their point, even denying to press charges on those who beat them. In another instance, the Freedom Riders found themselves locked inside of a church due to harassment. This led President John F. Kennedy to call in the national guard to help protect the young activists.
Lewis enrolled in the American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee, and studied religion and philosophy. Lewis found himself becoming more interested in nonviolent protests and participated in sit-ins at segregated public spaces. He also founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at his school, which eventually led to the desegregation of Nashville’s lunch counters. In the SNCC, students were taught to speak and act peacefully through many activities, including roleplay in which some students would act like abusers while the other students would act like survivors and practice how to respond with peace.
In 1963, Lewis became the youngest speaker at the March on Washington and even helped plan the massive event. “We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political, and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them” Lewis proclaimed in a speech he gave at the event. Undoubtedly a bit of a nerve-wracking day, Lewis had to provide himself with some encouragement before going on, saying, “I stood up, and I said to myself, ‘This is it. I looked straight out, and I started speaking.” Due to this, he will forever be known as a member of the “Big Six”, a group of some of the most famous civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., of course, James Farmer, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young.
Before the March on Washington took place, members of the Big Six found themselves in the Oval Office with John F. Kennedy. At their meeting, Kennedy was told about the protest and, with the level of divisiveness in the air, was understandably worried about what could unfold at the event. Still, the men told Kennedy it would be nothing but a peaceful protest, and after the March on Washington took place, Kennedy met the men again in the Oval Office to tell them just how impressed he was. Unfortunately, President Kennedy, who had more respect for the Big Six than ever before, was assassinated before signing the Civil Rights Act to show his support. However, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed it just two days before July 4, 1964, showing support for the civil rights movement in his place.
In the simplest terms, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned all discrimination and discriminatory practices in America. Not only did it protect people based on the color of their skin, but it also sought to protect people from discrimination based on their gender, national origin, and religion. While the act itself seemed like significant progress, many Black people were still discriminated against even as others’ heroics continued to push the message of racial justice. For example, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. were still busy dismantling Alabama’s public transit system through the Montgomery Bus Boycott (a topic further explored in the essay “The Woman On the Bus” published on 02/10/21) during the time after the passage of the Civil Rights Act even as African Americans struggled to exert their right to vote in elections. Thus, Lewis, the Big Six, and all other civil rights leaders and activists kept pushing on with hope in their hearts and change in their pockets.
“There was so much hope. So much optimism after the March on Washington,” Lewis would say in a video by TIME Magazine, “So many of us went into the state of Mississippi, we went into Alabama, we went to Selma.” Selma, Alabama, is another important city in John Lewis’s life. Here he organized a 50+ mile march with Hosea Williams, another notable civil right leader, from Selma to Montgomery to bring attention to the voting issues in the South. “In Selma, only 2.1% of African Americans were registered to vote. The only time you could even attempt to register to vote was the first and third Mondays of each month,” John Lewis said of the voter suppression he was striving to fight, an issue that is still alive today.
Back in 1965, Black Americans were also required to pass--but often failed--literacy tests to vote, which can be attributed to the lack of adequate schooling for Black Americans at the time. Despite their peaceful protest against such issues, when the marchers arrived at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, they were severely beaten by state troopers; John Lewis even suffered a fractured skull. This day became known as Bloody Sunday. However, once again the heroics and courage displayed by those fighting for their fundamental rights as American citizens were acknowledged by the Johnson Administration as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law. This law sought to dismantle barriers that only added to the hardships of Black Americans who wanted to vote.
Lewis continued to move forward despite the many setbacks that soon followed. Lewis saw Dr. Martin Luther King as both a hero and an inspiration and was devastated when he was assassinated. Lewis kept pushing ahead, and in 1970, he became the executive director of the Voter Education Project (VEP), a program created by the recently assassinated Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of John F. Kennedy and another civil rights activist, that reached out to unregistered voters by administering voter education programs and voter registration drives. Lewis added to the project by extending its outreach to those living in poor minority communities through Voter Mobilization Tours. Members of the VEP would walk around southern neighborhoods and encourage citizens to register and vote. These efforts helped nearly four million minority, low-income, and other similar Americans to register to vote.
In 1975, during his time working for VEP, Lewis received the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize, and in 1977, Lewis resigned from his position to run for Congress. Sadly, he lost the race in a runoff election, but President Jimmy Carter eventually appointed him as the director of ACTION, a federal volunteer agency due to his skills and reputation. In 1981, Lewis made a successful bid for a political office, this time as a member of the Atlanta City Council in 1986. As a member of the Atlanta City Council, Lewis worked in neighborhood preservation and ethics. “I admired his work fighting to prevent intrusive roads from dividing historic neighborhoods and opposing industrial developments that threatened the quality of life of white working-class neighborhoods like Cabbagetown, which is not far from where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth home,” government and education columnist Jabari Simama would later write.
In 1986, he was elected to Congress to represent Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District. For thirty years, Congressman Lewis served on many different Congress committees, including the Subcommittee of Health on the House Ways and Means Committee, a congress committee that creates bills regarding taxation, and the House Budget Committee. He was also the Senior Chief Deputy Democratic Whip as a member of the Democratic Steering Committee, a member of the Black Caucus, and a member of the Congressional Committee to Support Writers and Journalists. On all these different committees, Lewis fought for educational improvements, methods to reduce poverty, healthcare reform, and the Voting Rights Act. Although he felt discouraged by the Shelby County v. Holder case in 2013 that produced a ruling that limited some voting rights, he helped revitalize the Voting Rights Act over time.
During his time in Congress, his peaceful mind and nature were on full display when former Klansman Elwin Wilson, a man who harassed and beat Lewis during the Freedom Riders protests, met with John Lewis to apologize. Against all odds and with the ball in his court, John Lewis accepted his apology. In 2010, President Barack Obama also awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his peaceful yet courageous activism over the years, stating, “[W]hen parents teach their children what is meant by courage, the story of John Lewis will come to mind.” Courageous was perhaps the best way to describe John Lewis as he continued striving for change despite repeatedly being arrested in his life--five times while in Congress and forty-five times in total while peacefully fighting for justice and never once giving up.
In 2012, John Lewis also stood up for gun reform legislation after the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in which he declared, “We [Congress and America] have been too quiet for too long. There comes a time when you have to say something. You have to make a little noise. You have to move your feet. This is the time.” Unfortunately for Lewis, he was never able to witness actual comprehensive gun reform legislation in his lifetime.
By the time he was 76 years old, Lewis was looking to educate young Americans about the civil rights movement and wrote a series of graphic novels with the help of writer Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell. In “March: Book Three”, the story of Selma was told; the front cover of the book featured an aerial shot of a group of peaceful protesters about to clash with police. The ground they walk on has the word “March” spray-painted on the blacktop, an image nearly identical to the images seen in Washington D.C. in the summer of 2020. For this book, he was awarded the National Book Award. He described the feeling of winning the award as both “unreal” and “unbelievable.”
In 2019, John Lewis’s office announced that he had been diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. “I have been in some kind of fight - for freedom, equality, basic human rights - for nearly my entire life,” Lewis said in a CNN report, “I have never faced a fight quite like this one I have now.” Lewis continued his work in Congress, and on June 4, 2020, he stated that he felt he was getting better. However, Lewis passed away on July 18, 2020. Lewis’s passing came during an unforgettable time in American history, right at the height of the George Floyd protests where 93% of the demonstrations ended peacefully with the remaining 7% of the protests turning violent, often on account of white nationalists initiating combat. When looking upon the summer 2020 protests, Lewis must have felt a sense of pride seeing young Americans fighting for change the way he did.
“Serving alongside Congressman John Lewis in the House of Representatives has been the honor of my life. His leadership and grace guided much of the Ways and Means Committee’s - and Congress’s - most meaningful and important work.”
- Congressman Richard Neal
Reflection
When searching for quotes to put at the beginning of these essays that honor different icons from different movements, I try to find statements that capture not only the true spirit of the individuals discussed but the magic that came with both them and their messages. When I first read John Lewis’s quote, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America”, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find anything that would compare. As explained in The Vinny Demme Portfolio’s first essay for Black History Month, many of the stories posted on this website during February 2021--the first time The Vinny Demme Portfolio has ever celebrated Black History Month--are either completely new stories to me or expansions of small yet impactful pieces of history I already knew. Lewis’s quote is fantastic because it’s just him. I honestly think that if I had read that quote before writing this essay without any prior knowledge of John Lewis, I would have had a good idea of who he was and even what he stood for.
I’m a bit of an oddball when it comes to both my college degree, a BA in Political Science and Government, and my future career aspects. My only real political ideals and opinions before taking my first political science class were that I liked Obama, global warming was terrible, I hated Donald Trump, a split government was necessary (state and federal), and the worst rhetoric was the rhetoric that led to racism. Even while I knew all of that, I must admit that I never really took the time to expand beyond the primary discussion points. To my great regret, I knew I had heard John Lewis’s name before, but I honestly had no real idea who John Lewis was when I heard the news that he passed away.
John Lewis died on July 17, 2020, a little over a month after George Floyd’s death and during the middle of the biggest collection of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in American history. John Lewis couldn’t have passed at a more significant time. Not only was 2020 an election year but along with BLM protests, America saw itself in the middle of a raging pandemic, an economic collapse, and a rise in domestic terrorism by white nationalists and other groups who contributed to the 7% of BLM protests that were violent.
Through the stories of John Lewis being arrested a total of 45 times for participating in demonstrations and, as mentioned, even getting beaten to a pulp for doing things like walking into a bus stop waiting area, I am reminded of the racial disparities present in the treatment of Black Americans and other minorities by the worst members of law enforcement. I remember, for example, images of rows and rows of the National Guard soldiers present on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the Black Lives Matter protests, and I’ve heard about many of the 7% of violent BLM protests involving police interference. There’s also the issue of the time Donald Trump ordered teargas to be deployed by officers on a highly peaceful crowd of protesters outside of the White House gates just for a photo op of him holding a bible outside of a church he had never attended before.
“When Black people protest for our lives, we are all too often met by National Guard troops or police equipped with assault rifles, shields, tear gas, and battle helmets,” The Black Lives Matter Global Network stated in a January 2021 interview with CNN. This interview was published online only four days after the deadly insurrection at the United States Capitol. However, while some have blamed the insurrection on the lack of police presence at the capitol on January 6, others point out that the uncontained violence was more than likely the result of the lack of police presence due to a majority of the crowd being white. A broader discussion about race, politics, and justice clearly needs to happen.
For example, an overall failure of planning no doubt occurred before Capitol Hill’s events on January 6, 2021. Often before a demonstration, the demonstration, in this case, being Donald Trump’s rally outside of the White House, a threat assessment regarding the demonstration is completed. “One of the things we know from extensive research,” Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing, said in a January 2021 interview with NPR, “is that those threat assessments are colored by police world views, which means that threats from the left and threats from racial minorities are always exaggerated, and threats from the right and white nationalist groups are always diminished,” Vitale states that when it comes to Black and minority demonstrations, many police, and law enforcement are typically present. However, when it comes to white majority demonstrations, even though white nationalist groups have been classified as America’s number one terrorist threat, police and law enforcement presence is typically far less than the Black and minority demonstrations. It is speculated that because the supporters were predominately white, the Capitol was stormed far more easily.
And really, that’s no surprise. In America, one could easily imagine that if a BLM protest took place on the capitol steps, nearly all, or at least a handful, of those protesters would have been faced with police brutality right off the bat due to many stats, like statistics from the Washington Post showing that 36% of unarmed people shot and killed by police are Black people. At first glance, 36% is not all the much. However, the number becomes alarming once one remembers that only around 14.7% of the American population is Black alone or in combination with another race. However, something more can be said about the violent rampage put forth by the angry mobsters on the sixth—while there is still a chance for violence in America regarding the issue of rigged elections and the false issue of voter fraud, many riots were planned to take place at all 50 state capitals… riots and demonstrations that did not happen and if they did, were not nearly as big as the initial storming on January 6.
Meanwhile, those peacefully protesting BLM continued to do so day after day after day until a day without a protest seemed unnatural. Even when there were arrests, even when there was police brutality, these marches and demonstrations did everything they could to get their point across, showing that the “good trouble” will forever go down in history and be remembered with far more interest and respect than the bad.
Due to a networking issue at The Vinny Demme Portfolio headquarters, one that took the uploading of this essay online an hour to do so, this essay has yet to be properly sourced and all images are not added yet. However, our highly trained team of officials is working on solving the problem.
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