Honoring John Lewis

John Lewis is going to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom today. I’ve written about John Lewis repeatedly over the life of Booman Tribune. I admire and respect him more than any other living American. I am very happy to see him honored by the first African-American president. Without John Lewis, there is no President Obama.

May 20, 1961: Freedom Riders John Lewis and James Zwerg after being attacked and beaten by segregationists in Montgomery, Alabama.

Here, Jim Zwerg contextualizes the photograph (above):

Q: You were attacked when you arrived at the bus station?

Zwerg: The idea had been that cars from the community would meet us. We’d disperse into these cars, get out into the community, and avoid the possibility of violence. And the next morning we were to come back to the station and I would use the colored services and they would go to some of the white services — the restroom, the water fountain, etc. And then you’d get on the bus and go to the next city. It was meant to be as non-violent as possible, to avoid confrontation as much as possible.

Well, before we got off the bus, we looked out and saw the crowd. You could see things in their hands — hammers, chains, pipes… there was some conversation about it. As we got off the bus, there was some anxiety. We started looking for the cars. But the mob had surrounded the bus station so there was no way cars could get in and we realized at that moment that we were going to get it.

There was a fellow, a reporter, with an old boom mike and he was panning the crowd. And that’s when this heavy-set fellow in a white T-shirt… he had a cigar as I remember… came out and grabbed the mike and jumped on it… just smashed it… basically telling the press, “Back off! You are not going to take any pictures of this. You better stay out or you’re going to get it next.” You could hear crowd yelling and of course a lot of them were, “Get the nigger-lover!” I was the only white guy there.

I bowed my head and asked God to give me the strength and love that I would need, that I put my life in his hands, and to forgive them. And I had the most wonderful religious experience. I felt a presence as close to me as breath itself, if you will, that gave me peace knowing that whatever came, it was okay. Before I opened my eyes, I was grabbed. I was pulled over a railing and thrown to the ground. I remember trying to get up on all fours because you try to get back to your group.

One of the things that I alluded to earlier was the strength we got from one another. To this day I’m sure I’m not the most nonviolent person in the world, but the strength of those people with me gave me strength beyond my own capabilities. Just as when we would see someone else being beaten, our hearts went to them and our strength went to them.

Q: Were you hurt?

Zwerg: Traditionally a white man got picked out for the violence first. That gave the rest of the folks a chance to get away. I was told that several tried to get into the bus terminal. I was knocked to the ground. I remember being kicked in the spine and hearing my back crack, and the pain. I fell on my back and a foot came down on my face. The next thing I remember is waking up in the back of a vehicle and John Lewis handing me a rag to wipe my face. I passed out again and when I woke up I was in another moving vehicle with some very southern-sounding whites. I figured I’m off to get lynched. I had no idea who they were. Again, I went unconscious and I woke up in the hospital. I was informed that I had been unconscious for a day and a half. One of the nurses told me that another little crowd were going to try and lynch me. They had come within a half block of the hospital. She said that she knocked me out in case they did make it, so that I would not be aware of what was happening. I mean, those pictures that appeared in the magazines, the interview… I don’t remember them at all. I do remember a class of students — I think they were high school age, coming to visit me one time.

John Lewis took many beatings. His worst beating came during the march in Selma, Alabama where his skull was fractured.

People need to remember how much courage it took to end Jim Crow. Remember to honor John Lewis today.

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

10 thoughts on “Honoring John Lewis”

  1. “When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it–always.”
    Mohandas K. Gandhi

  5. Here is John Lewis’s speech from the March on Washington, as written.  The established civil rights leaders asked Lewis to tone down the speech as delivered.  He did.  (Info from Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, pp. 398-9.

    We march today for jobs and freedom, be we have nothing to be proud of. For hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here.  They have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages…or no wages at all.

    In good conscience, we cannot support the administration’s civil rights bill, for it is too little, and too late.  There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality.

    This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses, [for] engaging in peaceful demonstrations…

    The voting section oof this bill will not help thousands of black citizens who want to vote.  It wil not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama, and Georgia, who are qualified to vote, but lack a 6th grade education. “One man, one vote,” is the African cry.  It is ours, too. (It must be ours.)

    We are now involved in…revolution.  This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromise and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic, and social exploitation.  What political leader here can stand up and say, “My party is the party of principles? The party of Kennedy is also the party of [James] Eastland.  The party of [Jacob] Javits is also the party of [Barry] Goldwater.  Where is our party?

    In some parts of the South we work in the fields from sun-up to sun-down for $12 a week.  In Albany, Georgia, nine of our leaders have been indicted not by Dixiecrats but by the Federal Government for peaceful protest.  But what did the Federal Government do when Albany’s Deputy Sheriff [Cull Cunningham] beat Attorney C. C. King and left him half dead?  What did the Federal Government do when local police officials kicked and assaulted the pregnant wife [Marion] or Slater King, and she lost her baby.

    It seems to me that the Albany indictment is part of a conspiracy on the part of the Federal Government and local politicians in the interest of expediency.

    I want to know, which side is the Federal Government on?

    The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery.  The non-violent revolution is saying, “We will not wait for the courts to act, fore we have been waiting hundreds of years.  We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside any national structure that could or would assure us a victory.”

    To those who have said, “Be Patient and Wait,” we must say that “Patience is a dirty and nasty word.”  We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually, we want our freedom, and we want it now.  We cannot depend on anly political party, for both the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.

    We will 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 about.  In the struggle we must seek more than civil rights; we must work for the community of love, peace and true brotherhood.  Our minds, souls, and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all the people.

    The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the street and put it in the courts.  Listen, Mr. Kennedy, Listen, Mr. Congressman, listen fellow citizens, the black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won’t be a “cooling-off” period.

    We won’t stop now. All the forces of Eastland, [Ross] Barnett, [George] Wallace, and [Strom] Thurmond won’t stop this revolution.  The time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington.  We will march through the South, through the Heart of Dixie, the way [General William] Sherman did.  We shall pursue our own “scorched earth” policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground–non-violently.  We shall fragment the South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of democracy. We will makes the action of he past few months look petty.  And I say to you, WAKE UP AMERICA!

    There is a more important way to honor John Lewis than a Medal of Freedom.  People need to do more than remember the courage it took to end Jim Crow.  They must gain a little of that courage themselves.

    Bernice Johnson Reagon has talked about the role of music in the civil rights movement.  One of the songs, a religious song, that allowed folks to face their fear in unity was this one:

    This little light of mine,
    I’m gonna let it shine.
    This little light of mine,
    I’m gonna let it shine.
    This little light of mine,
    I’m gonna let it shine.
    Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.

    At a meeting before each demonstration, the leadership would warm up the people to the task, and then they would start singing, verse after verse, until (as they say) the spirit moved them, and they walked to picket.

    When we regain the cultural roots of protest, we will fill the streets again.  It takes more than philosophical principles or policy goals to move people.

    May we be worthy of the legacy that John Lewis brought all Americans.

    1. Beautiful post, Tarheel Dem.  Among the other veterans of the Albany Movement—Charles and Shirley Sherrod.

      (Andrew Breitbart still has no idea who he’s messing with….)

  6. Thanks, Booman.  Let’s honor Bill Russell—also receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom today—too.

    Russell met Charlie Evers in the early 1960s and told him to call if he (Russell) could help.  After Medgar Evers was assassinated, Charlie Evers called Russell and said, “I could use some help right now, but you might be killed.”  At his own expense, Russell flew to Jackson, Mississippi and gave basketball clinics to children in the area.  (And yes, a 6’9″ black man with a goatee was a conspicuous target in central Mississippi in August 1963.)

    Several years ago, there was a tribute to Russell in the Boston Garden, with the proceeds benefiting the Mentoring Partnership.  It was two events in one.

    The larger, more public event was thousands of Bostonians and basketball fans turning out to give long-overdue recognition to the greatest winner in the history of American professional team sports and, arguably, the greatest basketball player ever.

    Then there was the parallel, unacknowledged, encoded event that involved the dozens of leaders of the sports and entertainment wing of the Civil Rights Movement—some of whom spoke or performed–who were there to pay tribute to one of their own.

    Just as war veterans know and share something that the rest of us don’t, veterans of “the Movement” know and share something that the rest of us don’t.  It was remarkable to catch just a glimpse of what Bill Russell meant to his peers.

    1. Close to 20 years ago now, Bob Ryan wrote a great article(I guess it was really opinion piece) basically saying that if there was a basketball game played to save the world, he’d want Bill Russell as the starting center.  That Russell wouldn’t let them lose.  And yes, this was writen when Shaq and The Dream were in their prime(not to mention the Admiral).

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