Practically, the news coverage of CNN last weekend was entirely devoted to an 80-year-old US congressman from Georgia named John Lewis who died from pancreatic cancer. Who was John Lewis? He was one of the 10 children of Alabama sharecroppers who once dreamed of becoming a minister after listening on the radio to a young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. To train himself up, he delivered sermons to the chickens in their coops. He preached to them everyday, marrying the roosters and hens and even solemnizing the dead poultry.
He joined the civil rights movement when Rosa Parks, a department store clerk, was arrested by the police when she refused to vacate her bus seat in favor of a white passenger. While a student at the Fisk University, he took part in non-violent resistance and joined the drive to integrate lunch counters in schools and waiting rooms in bus stations. He was the youngest and last survivor of the “big six” leaders of the civil rights movement led by King Jr., which organized the 1963 March in Washington.
He was awarded the highest civilian decoration, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 by President Barack Obama. He had taken part in countless rallies, sit-downs and protest marches and beaten, tear gassed and truncheoned with his skull fractured but his spirit never gave up. By his own account, he was arrested more than 40 times for his militancy but his yearning for freedom never waned. On May 9, 1961, as a freedom rider, Lewis almost died when he was beaten black-and-blue by a white man. Years later, while he was already a congressman, a man named Elwin Wilson went to Lewis office in Washington and admitted his crime. He apologized and sought Lewis’ forgiveness. Lewis embraced Wilson saying that the spirit of the civil rights movement “was love and redemption, never malice or hate.” No wonder, Lewis is considered as “the conscience of the nation.”
All his trials and sufferings were just part of life’s routine. But what remained most vivid in Lewis’ memory was the March 7, 1965 protest march in Selma, Alabama with fellow freedom fighters numbering 600 who were petitioning for voting rights. But why in Selma? Selma, as late as the 1960s, had not allowed the blacks to vote. No colored man could register since the white registrars required black applicants’ literacy test and payment of poll taxes to qualify as a voter. They were asked silly questions like “How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?” The local authorities were abusive and intolerant of the blacks. Selma was the seat of the most atrocious Ku Klux Klan, which had caused untold atrocities to the black population. Selma was virtually the capital of racism in America where the grip of Jim Crow was the tightest. No wonder the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) selected Selma as the test case in its efforts to gain voting rights for its black members. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Selma and announced to the congregation that Selma was the battleground for voting rights. Lewis and another young colleague from SCLC, Hosea Williams, organized the long march from Selma to Montgomery to present their petition to Governor George Wallace, demanding the right to vote. The march started from Brown Chapel but before they could cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were confronted at the other end by a multitude of battle-ready, blue helmeted state troopers. The troop commander, Major John Cloud, ordered the protester to go back but instead of retreating, Lewis asked his marchers to kneel and pray. In less than a minute after they were ordered to disperse, the troops led by a cavalry attacked the protesters. As narrated in his memoir, “Walking With The Wind,” Lewis narrated that Cloud ordered his men: “Get ’em. Get the niggers. And then they were upon us. The first of the troopers came over me, a large, husky man. Without a word, he swung his club against the left side of my head. I did not feel any pain… I raised my arm as I curled up. And then the same trooper hit me again…. And then a cloud of smoke rose all around us. Tear gas…I began choking, coughing. I felt as if I was taking my last breath…. This is it. People are going to die here. I’m going to die here.”
The whole incident was covered by TV and media and that evening ABC interrupted its regular programming and showed its film coverage of the assault of the marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was watched by around 48 million Americans, and lasted for at least 15 minutes. The sight of hundreds of peaceful black demonstrators being brutalized, clubbed and gassed unnerved and shook the moral foundation of America. It galvanized the resolve of the civil rights movement to pursue its demand for equality and justice. Six months later, the US Congress enacted “The 1965 Voting Rights.” President Lyndon B. Johnson said that even if the country could be the richest country on earth and “conquer the stars, if it proved unequal to the issue (of civil rights), then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.” And no man can claim credit for the monumental passage of the voting rights for the black other than Lewis.
America is still struggling to achieve a society that can live with its conscience. Great strides have been made over the years and it has even elected a black man to the White House. Thanks to John Lewis who had contributed a giant step when he crossed that bridge in Selma.
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