Today is John Lewis’ birthday. He was born in Pike County, Alabama on February 21, 1940. When he was growing up, his mom told him to stay out of trouble. He took that to heart, and throughout his life, he only got into what he called “good trouble.”
Mr. Lewis was a civil rights activist and one of the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. He started his activist career while he was a college student in Nashville. His first arrest (of nearly 50 during his life) was at the Woolworths where he and other black students were peacefully waiting to be served at the lunch counter on the mezzanine. During a trip to Nashville in 2018, I visited the old Woolworths. It is now a large restaurant, and I had lunch at the ground-floor lunch counter. I sat right there on the fourth stool and had sweet potato soup.
Mr. Lewis later became close friends with Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1963, He joined Rev. Dr. King for the March on Washington where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. A 23-year-old John Lewis also delivered a speech to the crowd of 200,000.
In 1965, he was one of the participants in a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama to protest racial discrimination in voting. At the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, the marchers were met with violence by local law enforcement. The police beat Mr. Lewis so badly that they cracked his skull.
In 1961, he became one of the original thirteen Freedom Riders. The group of blacks and whites planned to ride interstate buses from Washington, DC to New Orleans and to challenge laws in the South which mandated segregated seating on buses. In the South, the group was beaten by angry mobs and arrested.
Later, Mr. Lewis formally entered the political world. He was the US Representative for Georgia’s 5th District from 1987 until his death in 2020. Among his other accomplishments, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.
My neighborhood is in the 5th district, so he was my congressman. During the Inman Park Festival each spring, he would ride in the parade, and his car would be staged next to my house before the event. It was fun to watch people walk up to him and shake his hand as he waited for the parade to start. For all of his fame and accomplishments, he was very down to earth. He was absolutely adored around here.
Mr. Lewis died July 17, 2020, just four months into the pandemic. He didn’t get to see us emerge on the other side of that terrible time. He didn’t get to see Joe Biden get elected as US president in November 2020.
When he died, the neighbors put ribbons all over the neighborhood. Some of them were up for months.
As I reflect back on John Lewis’ story, I recognize that he was a humble man who led a remarkable life. And, up until the end, he was getting into good trouble.
