55 years later…

We remember…John Lewis

55 years ago ….

John Lewis went to Selma in 1965 knowing he would be arrested. He was 25 years old. He packed a backpack, and carried a few things…

“I remember very well. As a matter of fact I went to the Army surplus store and bought this backpack. I really thought we were going to be successful walking all the way from Selma to Montgomery. And somehow, someway I thought maybe we would be arrested and we would go to jail, so while in jail I wanted to have something to read. I had two books in the backpack. I wanted to have something to eat—I had one apple and one orange. One apple and one orange wouldn’t last that long. Being in jail, you know I had been arrested and been to jail before, the sad thing about being in jail for two or three days, you need to brush your teeth. So there was toothpaste and a toothbrush in there.

I don’t know what happened to that backpack, I don’t know what happened to the two books. I don’t know what happened to the trench coat. One of the books was by a professor of political science at Harvard and the other book was by Thomas Merton, the monk. I just wished I had them. The Smithsonian and the Library of Congress are always asking me what happened to them and I tell them I really don’t know”. – John Lewis

Lewis would suffer a fractured skull from the Bloody Sunday beating, the scar of which was visible. The incident was one of the three Selma-to-Montgomery marches for voting rights, and the efforts led to passage of the Voting Rights Act.

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50 years later…

Congressman John Lewis walked across the bridge in Selma with the first black president of the United States, President Barack Obama.

55 years later…

This week, John Lewis makes his way to his final resting space. Yesterday his body was taken over the Selma bridge – the path that greeted him 55 years ago with a bloody beating would now be sprinkled with rose petals in honor to receive him?

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Today, Lewis will be taken to lie in state at the US Capitol, the first black legislator to have this ceremonial honor. His funeral will be on Thursday.

Lewis received an honorary degree from Brown University in 2012

April, 2020

“To the rioters… across the country: I see you, and I hear you,” he wrote. “I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness. Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long. Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way. Organize. Demonstrate. Sit-in. Stand-up. Vote. Be constructive, not destructive. History has proven time and again that non-violent, peaceful protest is the way to achieve the justice and equality that we all deserve.”