Newspaper Page Text
Cover Story
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“It’s part of my nature, part of my
DNA, to be hopeful and optimistic.”
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John Lewis' journey from civil rights to Congress
U.S. Rep. John Lewis still remembers the
advice his family gave him when he was a shy schoolboy in a segregated Pike County,
Ala., about 10 miles from Troy (pop. 13,935). The sharecroppers son ignored the guid
ance then, and five decades later, he’s still ignoring it.
“When 1 was growing up, my mother, my father, my grandparents and great-grand
parents always told us, ‘Don’t get in the way. Don’t get in trouble,’" says Lewis, 64. But
Lewis has spent his entire adult life getting into trouble, and America is a better place
because of his endless pursuit of equality for all citizens.
In Troy, a young Lewis could purchase a hand-mixed cola drink at Byrd's
Drugs, but he had to take it outside to drink it. The Georgia congress
man painfully recalls the memories of "colored" bathrooms and
water fountains and the whites onh public library that
' t fT ; denied his request tor a library card “As a child. I knew
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r » thing about it." he says.
As a college student in Nashville, Tenn., he organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters
and participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides, which challenged segregation at interstate bus
terminals across the South. Lewis, who was arrested 40 times for his acts of civil disobedience,
offered his body as an instmment of change and was beaten so many times that he can’t
imber all of his injuries. By 1963, Lewis—then 23 and chairman of the Student Nonvi
r Coordinating Committee (SNCC) —was considered one of the “Big Six” leaders of the
ement, along with Martin Luther King Jr. and James Farmer, and met with Presidents
medy and Johnson. That summer, he delivered a passionate address to hundreds of thou
ds at the March on Washington, just before King’s famous “I Have a Dream" speech.
Lewis is perhaps best known for joining with fellow civil rights leader Hosea
filliams in leading more than 6(X) marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
elma, Ala., in 1965 to protest racial discrimination in voter registration. The march,
mown as "Bloody Sunday,” was instrumental in bringing about passage of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, which ended discriminatory practices, such as literacy tests and
poll taxes, designed to deny voting rights to blacks.
“I got in the way,” says Lewis in his usual understated way. “I got in trou
ble; it was good trouble. Here in Congress from time to time, I get in trou
ble, but it’s necessary trouble.”
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Lewis, 24, addresses a group
of newspaper editors in 1964.