Remembering the Conscience of Congress

Last week, Congressman John Lewis was remembered in his home state of Alabama after his death on July 17th. He was the last surviving member of the Big Six – a group of leaders who organized the 1963 March on Washington and was an honored civil rights leader until his last breath.

Dr. King’s words first reached him on the radio when he was 15, and he met him for the first time just three years later. As a student in Nashville, he dedicated himself to the civil rights movement, organizing sit-ins, bus boycotts, and peaceful protests. He is remembered and revered for this time where he first started using the phrase “good trouble”, intended to mean that citizens need to engage in necessary trouble in order to activate real progress.

In 1961, he became one of the 13 original Freedom Riders, and was often assaulted by individuals acting alone as well as angry mobs of white people. He led the first of the Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In 1981, he was elected to Atlanta’s City Council and in 1987 he started his three decades as the Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district. Over the duration of the civil rights movement, he was arrested more than 40 times for the cause of racial justice – a cause he fought for up until the day he died, having visited the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC just one day before his death. He was arrested alongside millennials a fraction of his age over the immigration crisis in America, just a few years ago. I remember being glued to C-SPAN in 2013, watching him lead the sit-in in the House of Representatives over gun control. Over his life, he lived his creed more faithfully than anyone – getting into good trouble over the injustices he saw – and supporting the youth of this nation as they aimed to do the same.

In a time of divisive politics, he will long-be remembered as the “Conscience of Congress” – always reflective on the past, thoughtful about the present, and hopeful for the future. In his final words, penned shortly before his death, he said this:

Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

…

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war.

Full text here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html 

In his honor, I challenge each of us to get into a little good trouble this week.

Reshma