Lawrence Jackson/AP Photo
Rep. John Lewis on Capitol Hill in October 2007
I tried to be in the presence of John Lewis as often as I could. I grew up admiring him. My parents did not allow me to attend the March on Washington since I was only nine years old at the time. My father and older brother attended, and I recall that upon their return home they extolled the youngest speaker, the 23-year-old Lewis. Though his speech had been toned down by skittish elders, it was still plenty strong. My father talked about it more glowingly than even the most famous speech of the day, Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal “I Have a Dream” oration.
Decades later, I encountered Lewis face-to-face for the first time at an event at Yale Law School honoring Burke Marshall, who had served as the assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Lewis was the one chosen by the school to present the award to Marshall. I was a bit surprised. After all, in his speech at the March on Washington, Lewis had complained bitterly specifically about the Department of Justice and the absence of adequate federal protection for demonstrators menaced by brutal white supremacists. When I asked Rep. Lewis about this, he smiled, said that Marshall had done what he could in difficult circumstances, and that, in any event, it was important to be generous.
The last time I saw him face-to-face was in April 2017 at an event sponsored by Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, which bestowed upon him its Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award, given biennially to a leader who has “improved the quality of life of those in the United States and inspired others to do the same.” I had the honor of delivering a toast to Lewis. I told him of my admiration and gratitude and what a blessing it was just to be able to shake his hand.
Since the congressman’s death on July 17, there has been an altogether appropriate outpouring of public recognition for his service. His greatness has saved eulogists from having to resort to polite exaggeration. He really was, as many have observed, the conscience of the Congress.
Lewis lived a full, adventurous, meaningful life bountiful in useful lessons.
One has to do with independence. Lewis rejected Jim Crow ethics to demand respect and equality. He did so by confronting violence-prone racists on the Freedom Rides, at sit-ins, and, most dramatically, at the demonstration in Selma at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Even more difficult, morally, however, was his decision to reject the counsel of his parents. They urged him to forgo protest. They argued that open dissent would be futile and that the better course of action was accommodation. Lewis loved his parents, and he knew that they loved him and offered their advice sincerely on his behalf. Yet, even as a mere teenager, he was able somehow to distance himself from his parents, even as he continued to cherish them, and to chart an alternative course. He displayed similar independence later in life. He was genuinely close to the Clintons and had indicated to them that he would endorse Hillary when she ran for the presidency. In 2008, however, intuiting that Barack Obama represented a rare opportunity, Lewis changed his mind and endorsed the candidate who became the nation’s first African American president. It must have been agonizingly difficult to take that step. But he did so pursuant to that habit of independence on which he had long been working. Inculcating such a habit is a good thing for politically driven people. It can serve as a brake on tendencies to jump on bandwagons. At this moment, with passions running high, with people running in like-minded packs, afraid of deviating (or even merely appearing to deviate) from given ideological “lines,” it would be well to recall Lewis’s personal independence.
A second useful lesson has to do with Lewis’s persistence. Had he left the public stage in, say, 1970, he would have already earned a respected place in the history books. But after having attained legendary status as one of the stars of the Black freedom movement—Lewis was, after all, a founder and chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and only 23 when he spoke at the March on Washington—he spent over half a century laboring on behalf of numerous good causes including enhancing the rights of women, workers, refugees, and people of nonconforming sexual identities and desires. Some of that labor attracted headline-grabbing publicity, as when he was arrested at a demonstration on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in support of immigration legislation. But much of his work was done behind the scenes and consisted of attending to routine, utterly unglamorous chores—patiently listening to the complaints of constituents, dutifully showing up to countless meetings, courteously answering correspondence. Lewis proceeded with a disciplined, reassuring steadiness (though if provoked he was also capable of fiery preaching). He clearly understood that as a champion of social justice, seeking to improve the world as much as possible—which often meant a mere inch at a time—he was unavoidably entered into a marathon and not a sprint.
Third, Lewis displayed a wonderful, empathetic, plainspoken cosmopolitanism. Attuned to the aspirations of African Americans, Lewis was also sensitive to the yearnings of others. A lifelong apostle of Rev. King, Lewis faithfully followed the teaching of his hero in embracing universal brotherhood and sisterhood. He eschewed tribal narcissism and embraced coalition politics. He was the most praiseworthy American activist-politician of his generation, a veritable fountain of instruction and inspiration.
