Jul

John Lewis and “Good Trouble”

John Robert Lewis
February 21, 1940 – July 18, 2020

For John Lewis, activism for social change was a communal activity. He believed that people coming together to mentor, protest, and learn could create a society that they wanted to live in, what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others called the “beloved community.” Creating that community required persistence, optimism, and the willingness to make what he called “good trouble, necessary trouble.”

John Lewis addresses young leaders at a performance of the American History Museum’s Join the Student Sit-Ins program. (photo courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History)

Lewis was born in rural Alabama, and his family, teachers, and the Black church were his earliest mentors and protectors. They nourished his sense of self while he grew up in a nation that systematically denigrated and oppressed African Americans. In a 1979 interview, Lewis recalled listening to the experiences of his “father, and my uncle, and my grandfather, and great grandfathers” about their daily encounters with racial discrimination and white supremacy. He was a teenager when Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, and recalled in his autobiography that he thought, “That could have been me, beaten, tortured, dead, at the bottom of a river.”

Photograph of Emmett Till with his mother, Mamie Till Mobley. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Mamie Till Mobley family.

Lewis was inspired by Montgomery, Alabama’s African American community, which demanded an end to racial segregation on the city’s buses and boycotted the system for over a year. He told an interviewer that as a result of these experiences, he “grew up with a feeling that I had to find a way to oppose this system of segregation, racial discrimination.”

When he left home to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary (now American Baptist College) in Nashville, Tennessee, Lewis planned to enter the ministry. He attempted to establish a branch of the NAACP at the school, but the seminary’s administration derailed this plan.

Looking for an avenue for his activism, Lewis submitted his application to transfer to the all-white Troy State University. He would be following the example of Autherine Lucy, who braved riotous crowds when she attempted to desegregate the University of Alabama in 1956. Lewis sought advice from Dr. King, starting a partnership that would last until King’s assassination. Lewis reluctantly withdrew his application to Troy State, out of concern that white supremacists would drive his family from their land–or worse.

On his return to Nashville, John Lewis began attending Reverend James Lawson’s workshops on the theories and practice of nonviolent resistance to injustice. The workshop attendees formed the core of the Nashville Student Movement. Led by Diane Nash, activists including Lewis, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Berry, and the young minister Reverend C.T. Vivian became known for their commitment to nonviolence and courage. Their first campaign tested the city’s racially segregated lunch counters in 1959. A few months later, in 1960, Lewis and others took part in a long campaign of sit-ins in downtown Nashville as part of a national wave of resistance sparked by activists who refused to leave a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

In the midst of the protests, the experienced organizer Ella Baker held a meeting for college students, which resulted in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). For several years, SNCC would be John Lewis’s home, where he deepened his commitment to resistance and learned principles of community organizing.

A button for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. (Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History)

In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) began Freedom Rides. An interracial group of activists defied whites-only seats, restrooms, waiting rooms, and cafes in stations and on buses that travelled between states. SNCC activists John Lewis and Hank Thomas joined CORE’s protest. When CORE halted the protest in Birmingham, Alabama, after facing bombing and mob violence, the Freedom Rides continued under SNCC’s leadership. The racist violence intensified and in Montgomery, Alabama, a mob attack left John Lewis and James Zwerg battered and bloody. The Freedom Rides continued until Lewis and over 300 other Freedom Riders were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi. Lewis was among the people who were imprisoned in the state’s notorious Parchman prison.

A mug shot of John Lewis, taken after his arrest in Jackson, Mississippi, as a Freedom Rider. Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Records, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The following year brought him to Cairo, Illinois, where he and other SNCC activists worked alongside courageous local activists who demanded that the swimming pool, restaurants, and other facilities open their doors to all city residents, regardless of race.

This 1963 poster for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee features a Danny Lyon photograph of Lewis and other leaders praying while protesting racial segregation in Cairo, IL.. (Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History)

In 1963, Lewis was elected the chairman of SNCC. In this role he became the youngest member of the group planning the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The original speech Lewis wrote for the march represented the views of SNCC, which was harshly critical of the Kennedy administration’s civil rights record. To accommodate the other march organizers, Lewis delivered a toned-down speech that reminded listeners, “We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution. In the Delta of Mississippi, in Southwest Georgia, in the Black Belt of Alabama, in Harlem, in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and all over this nation the black masses are on a march for jobs and freedom.”

The program for and a pennant from the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” at which Lewis was a speaker. (Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History)

Numerous civil rights organizations became involved in Selma, Alabama’s contentious struggle for voting rights. In February 1965, police killed local activist Jimmie Lee Jackson, and the community planned a march in his honor to Montgomery, the state’s capital. John Lewis and Hosea Williams agreed to lead the march across the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. Law enforcement officers met the protesters with tear gas, whips, and batons, and violently beat them. Lewis sustained a skull fracture.

A March 1965 Life Magazine, with a cover photo of Bloody Sunday. John Lewis leads the marchers. (Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History)

Differences and tensions within SNCC had long been brewing, and in 1966, the membership of SNCC voted John Lewis out as chair and replaced him with Stokely Carmichael, a young activist whose grassroots work in Lowndes County, Alabama had gained the confidence of many of SNCC’s rank-and-file members. Lewis turned to other forms of activism and connecting communities with resources. He settled in Atlanta, where he would live for the rest of his life, and married Lillian Miles, a librarian at Atlanta University. Together they would raise their son, John-Miles Lewis.

A poster sponsored by the Voter Education Project encouraging citizens to register and vote. The Voter Education Project began in 1962; it raised and distributed funds to civil rights groups, especially in the southern states, in an effort to register citizens so they could vote at election time. (Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History)

Lewis saw voting as an essential part of civic life. From 1970 to 1977, he served as executive director of the Voter Education Project, and used the platform to organize African American voters in the South to exercise their rights as citizens. In 1972, the National Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History) created The Right to Vote, an exhibit designed to mark the dramatic expansion of voting rights due to the civil rights movement and the constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to 18. Lewis spoke at the opening.

Black and white photo of Lewis at podium

John Lewis speaking at the opening of “The Right to Vote.” Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Lewis gradually made his way to electoral politics, which he believed could be an effective way to create a more equal nation. After an unsuccessful run for Congress, and serving on the Atlanta City Council, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986, where he held office until his death. He worked for his local constituents, but also addressed national and international issues, including challenging the United States’ support of South Africa’s apartheid government. Lewis also expanded his idea of civil rights to include support for women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights.

Three posters from the American History Museum’s collection, representing different causes John Lewis fought for. (Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History)

Throughout his life, Lewis was willing to share his experiences with young people, but also to learn from them. At events such as the National Museum of American History’s National Youth Summit and a symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins, Lewis encouraged young people to be optimistic, build community, and fight injustice.

John Lewis crosses his arms and sings “We Shall Overcome” at the American History Museum’s 2011 National Youth Summit focused on Freedom Rides. Civil rights activists and leaders like Lewis shared the role of young people in shaping America’s past and future.

John Lewis’s last public appearance came in June 2020, near Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., where the military had violently dispersed peaceful protesters mourning George Floyd’s murder. Lewis told Washington Post reporter Jonathan Capehart that, “It was so moving and so gratifying to see people from all over America and all over the world saying through their action, ‘I can do something. I can say something’.” Even in the final chapter of his life, he still committed to the ideals so closely associated with him: optimism, commitment to creating the beloved community, and the importance of getting in “good trouble, necessary trouble.”

A “Black Lives Matter” poster collected in 2017. (Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.)

Modupe Labode is a curator at the National Museum of American History. This post was originally published by the museum’s blog, O Say Can You See?

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch Statement on the Death of Congressman John Lewis

July 18, 2020

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch and Congressman John Lewis at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.. (Photo by Leah L. Jones/NMAAHC)

I join the world today in mourning the passing of Congressman John Lewis. He was the conscience of a nation and a voice of moral clarity who spent his life challenging the country to live up to its ideals and extend the blessings of liberty to all.

Mr. Lewis was only 25 years old when he risked the ultimate sacrifice on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on “Bloody Sunday.” The national news that night showed the horrific footage of a state trooper savagely beating him with a nightstick. But it also showed Mr. Lewis, head bloodied but spirit unbroken, delaying a trip to the hospital for treatment of a fractured skull so he could plead with President Johnson to intervene in Alabama.

It is hard to imagine such courage at a young age, but at that point he was already a veteran of the civil rights movement and a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He helped organize the 1961 Freedom Rides that rode through the South to protest segregated interstate bus travel and the 1964 Freedom Summer effort to register Black voters throughout the South. He was the youngest person to speak at the 1963 March on Washington, giving a less fiery speech than originally planned, but one that still resonates today with its appeal, “We must say wake up America, wake up! For we cannot stop, and we will not and cannot be patient.”

When he was elected to Congress in 1986, Mr. Lewis brought that same tenacity and passion for social justice to the legislative branch of government. His arrival was lucky for the Smithsonian, as he turned out to be one of the biggest champions of building an African American museum on the National Mall. Mr. Lewis helped keep the project alive in people’s minds by introducing legislation for the museum every year until Congress finally enacted it in 2003. I do not know if the National Museum of African American History and Culture would have happened without him.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to get to know Mr. Lewis when I returned to the Smithsonian to become the museum’s founding director. After all the years of planning, collecting, and construction were done and the museum was finally finished, I gave him a tour to see what his persistence had helped create. During that emotional occasion, I asked him if he ever despaired––when he was marching, when he was protesting, or when he was being beaten in Selma and thought he might die. He said, “No, you can’t despair. You have to be hopeful.” It was an insight into his character and his abiding belief that the nation could become better than it had been. That we would one day make real the promise of justice and equality just as we had made real the museum.

In 2015, I had the honor of walking with Mr. Lewis on one of his annual pilgrimages back to Selma to recreate that pivotal moment in the civil rights era. It was one of the most poignant and surreal moments of my life. I felt as if I had been transported back in time as I walked with him on the bridge, thinking about the lessons this titan had taught me. The lessons he had taught us all.

Today, let us listen to his words and not despair for his loss. Let us rejoice in all he gave to the country and remember the road he paved for all who aspire to build a more just society. With dignity, with honor, and with courage, John Lewis embodied the better angels of our nature. We are better for having had his wisdom and compassion guiding us. On behalf of the Smithsonian, I send our heartfelt thoughts and condolences to his family.