A legacy carried on through the fight for justice
John Lewis was an American civil rights giant. Until his death from pancreatic cancer late last week, he was the last surviving leader who spoke at Martin Luther King’s famed March on Washington, was one of the original Freedom Riders who helped force the desegregation of the south, a man whose savage beating by a police officer in Alabama on “Bloody Sunday” in 1965 is credited with galvanizing support for the Voting Rights Act that was sent to Congress eight days later.
When Lewis snubbed President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, the president taunted the civil-rights-heroturned-Representative: “All talk, talk, talk — no action or results. Sad!” The contrast with history verged on parody: Lewis was an action figure come to life (his life story was literally told in a comic book), a man arrested dozens of times, imprisoned and beaten by police repeatedly — helping shape the course of modern American history.
“Our great nation’s history has only bent towards progress because great men like John Lewis took it upon themselves to help bend it,” Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader — no political ally of Lewis’ — said in a statement after Lewis died on July17 at the age of 80. As the tributes poured in from past presidents and current leaders, Trump joined in, ordering flags flown at halfmast and offering thoughts and prayers for the family of a “civil rights hero.”
This week, Americans were struggling to find appropriate ways to memorialize Lewis’ life. Candlelight vigils were held as Washington leaders debated whether his body could lie in state in the Capitol in the midst of a pandemic. Many are pushing to rename the bridge in Selma, Ala., where his head was cracked open by a trooper’s baton — currently emblazoned with the name of a Confederate officer who was a Ku Klux Klan grand dragon — in Lewis’ honour. Rep. Joyce Beatty suggested to the New York Times that a more active tribute was called for. “Maybe we march in his honour? John came into existence marching. Why wouldn’t we march behind him, as one way to say ‘Rest in power’?”
Beatty was expressing a growing sentiment that the real tribute to Lewis’ life’s work will not be in memorializing it, but in carrying it on.
Lewis himself, speaking on the legacy of his friend Martin Luther King in 2018, spoke of how to honour such work: “When you see something that is not right, something that is not fair, something that is not just, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something. You cannot be quiet.”
Much of Lewis’ activism in the 1960s focused on ensuring voting rights — culminating in the Voting Rights Act that was meant to ensure Black Americans had franchise. In 2013, large sections of that legislation were struck down by the Supreme Court, and up until his death, Lewis was working to restore them through new legislation.
Late last year, Lewis presided over A House of Representatives vote to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act. “There are forces in this country that want to keep American citizens from having a rightful say in the future of our nation. That’s why the VRA was gutted. We have to change that. We must change it and we will,” Lewis said months before the vote.
“I am deeply and very concerned about the future of our democracy. It seems like the lights are about to go out. We must have the capacity and the ability to redeem the soul of this nation and set it on the right course.”
Yet that act appears doomed as the Senate — led by the same Mitch McConnell who praised Lewis in the highest terms upon his death — has failed to take it up. This week, a number of Democratic lawmakers have suggested the Senate finally pass that act in tribute to Lewis. Rep. Jim Clyburn told CNN, “It should be the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020. That’s the way to do it. Words may be powerful, but deeds are lasting.”
Meanwhile, as a man whose legacy was built on civil rights protests died, the largest civil rights protest movement in U.S. history continues in the streets. He lived to see it. One of Lewis’ last public appearances was at a rally at Black Lives Matter plaza in Washington near the White House where protesters have clashed with police and military.
Even as news of Lewis’ death spread on the weekend, it sat side-by-side with reports from Portland, Ore., of unidentified federal paramilitary officers gassing and beating protesters and snatching them off the street in unmarked vans. Trump and his Homeland Security appointee have since claimed responsibility for the combat-fatigued immigration officers they claim are defending federal property from “anarchist” graffiti and vandalism. The local mayor and governor object to the presence of these forces, while Trump has promised to expand them to more cities, including immediately to Chicago.
The response from protesters might have heartened Lewis: In Portland, protests have been growing larger in defiance of the federal troops, including hundreds of self-identified “moms” wearing yellow shirts who have been acting as a shield cloaking protesters from the federal agents. The moms have been gassed. Their numbers have continued to grow.
On Monday in Portland, the crowd sang “We Shall Overcome.” It’s a song Lewis said sustained him through beatings and arrests. “It gave you a sense of faith, a sense of strength, to continue to struggle, to continue to push on. And you would lose your sense of fear,” Lewis told NPR in 2013.
In Congress, and in the streets, those claiming his legacy continue to struggle, continue to push on, fighting the same battles he waged. Causing “good trouble,” as he famously called it. Not talk talk talk, but action meant to lead to results. It may be as fitting a tribute as is possible.