‘Get in good trouble’
RIP to civil rights leader John Lewis As the United States mourns the loss of civil rights icon and 17term Democratic Congressmember John Lewis, we feature his 2012 instudio interview, when he tears up remembering the historic 1965 Selma to Montgomery march he helped lead in 1965 as a 25-year-old man, when he was almost beaten to death by police in what came to be called “Bloody Sunday” and helped push the country toward adopting the Voting Rights Act. “They came toward us, beating us with nightsticks and bullwhips, trampling us with horses,” he told Democracy Now! “All these many years later, I don’t recall how I made it back across that bridge to the church.”
DEMOCRACY
NOW!
AMY GOODMAN
AMY GOODMAN: The nation is mourning the loss of civil rights icon, 17-term Democratic Congressmember John Lewis, whose legacy of freedom fighting and justice seeking stretched from the Jim Crow era to the Black Lives Matter movement. Lewis died Friday at the age of 80. He was diagnosed in December with pancreatic cancer. John Lewis was born in Alabama to sharecroppers. He went on to become the youngest of the so-called Big Six who addressed the 1963 March on Washington, was ultimately elected in 1986 to be the congressional representative for his home state of Georgia, a post he never left. During the civil rights movement, Lewis marched side by side with Dr. Martin Luther King, helped found and served as chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and helped organize the Freedom Rides. He was arrested more than 40 times protesting segregation. As a mentor to those who followed in his footsteps, Lewis was known for encouraging them to, quote, “get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” In an interview last month, Lewis said the video of George Floyd’s death
10 July 16, 2020 DuluthReader.com
Twenty-five-year-old John Lewis before the violence started on “Bloody Sunday” – the March 7, 1965, march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. He was clubbd in the head by an Alabama state trooper. at the hands of Minneapolis police was, quote, “so painful, it made me cry,” he said, and that he was inspired by how it had sparked a new movement to end racial injustice. Congressmember Lewis made his final public appearance in June at the street near the White House that’s now named Black Lives Matter Plaza, where the words “Black Lives Matter” are painted in 35-foot yellow letters. Former President Barack Obama said Saturday he hugged Lewis at his inauguration in 2009 and, quote, “told him I was only there because of the sacrifices he made.” Meanwhile, President Trump waited more than 14 hours to tweet, after he had tweeted some 40 times, that he was, quote, “saddened” by Lewis’s death. Flags have been lowered to halfstaff at the Capitol and the White House, and in Atlanta, where Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ordered the flags
lowered to half-staff indefinitely. We bring you an extended excerpt of my interview in 2012 with Congressmember John Lewis. He walked into our studio alone here in New York City, after the release of his book, Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change. I began asking Congressmember Lewis about the Selma to Montgomery march he helped lead in 1965 as a 25-year-old man, when he was almost beaten to death by police in what came to be called “Bloody Sunday.” REP. JOHN LEWIS: On March 7, 1965, a group of us attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to dramatize to the nation that people wanted to register to vote. One young African American man had been shot and killed a few days earlier, in an adjoining county called Perry County – this is in the Black Belt of Alabama – the home county of Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., the home county of Mrs.
Rep. John Lewis, Feb. 21, 1940 - July 17, 2020.
