Jon Meacham’s biography of John Lewis is a wonderful book. It’s not, as Meacham himself said, a “full-blown biography”; it stops in its detail with the Civil Rights movement.
It was mind-opening to me. First, in conveying in a cinematic fashion the brutal violence Lewis and others incurred during that period, 1960-65. I’d read about it. I didn’t feel it. I do now, more than ever.
But above all, what I discovered in the book was Lewis’ faith-based commitment to non-violence and his ability to continue to make progress despite all the setbacks. He never gave up hope, nor the determination and courage to turn hope into reality, even knowing it would often be one step forward and one step back; indeed, sometimes seeming to be two steps back.”
There were other “learnings”
It’s important to remember that the public very much disapproved of the Freedom Fighters’ efforts, the sit-ins and other public protests during the first half of the ‘60s. Reform does not come without controversy. I loved Lewis’ citation from Horace Mann: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
Lewis’ pursuit of “the beloved community” was unwavering.
John Kennedy in the summer of 1963, reflecting on the Civil Rights Bill, remarked: “Sometimes you look at what you have done and the only thing you ask yourself is—what took you so long to do it?” That’s exactly how I felt when we at P&G finally gave the same rights to people of the same sex who were partners as we did to married partners in 1995.
Lewis kept his faith. It wasn’t easy—it was, in fact, the hardest thing in the world. How could you hold to a creed (non-violence) that appeared to produce more pain than progress? The only way to explain Lewis’ persistent non-violence, his unending commitment to answering hate with love and death with life, is to take him at his word: “We truly believe that we are on God’s side and, in spite of everything—the beatings, the bombings, the burnings—God’s truth would prevail.” Lewis recalled, “The anguish and the duration of the struggle was, in a way, a vindication of the premise of the struggle itself.”
President Johnson was at his best as he spoke before signing the Voting Rights Act in 1965: “The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such as issue (one that speaks to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation). Should we defy every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a Nation. For, with a country as with a person, ‘what has a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’”
And, continuing: “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.”
Here we are, just about 56 years after Johnson’s talk, facing the same existential challenge. Human rights are still under attack. Yet, we dare not give up.
Meacham aptly describes what drove John Lewis and Martin Luther King. The journey begins with faith—faith in the dignity of the worth of every human being. It calls for faith in God and that God gave us the courage to believe that the power of love is greater than the power of hate.
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