Last night, the world went to bed knowing that the stars were brighter but that the coming daylight was going to be dim.
John Lewis, the lion of this country's civil rights movement has passed away at age 80.
For a country in turmoil, panic, crisis - this feels like another 2020 body blow. People like Lewis, like Elijah Cummings, like Reverend CT Vivian, like Martin Luther King, even like flamboyant singer/songwriter Little Richard have always been voices for the voiceless. People who have used their reach, their access to microphones, their personal histories, to speak for us, to lead us, to take the first steps for us. They are brave that we may be emboldened.
Yes, speak for US. Black civil rights leaders speak as much for and to white people as they do for and to Black. Because civil rights should be universal rights. Because someone like John Lewis understood that until we all stand on the same level ground, this country and everyone in it, lives a lie. That it has never been about taking away my white rights, but distributing rights to all, preserving rights for all. And more than that, he understood that getting my white ass to join the fray with my privilege had to be a part of the change.
I am certain that John Lewis looked out across the current landscape of this nation and saw that while his torch was beginning to die out, millions of others, especially our youths, were picking up their own and holding them fearlessly aloft.
I have always been humbled by the pictures of those, like Lewis, who knew the risks of their actions, yet took them anyway. To see him, frozen in the photos of time, being beaten for being a Freedom Rider, for daring to be a proud Black man in a time when this country still actively lynched them - they are haunting, they are enraging, and they always make me ask myself - could I ever be that brave?
The answer inevitably comes back to this - I am a white woman, and I have never had to be. And while there are still miles of road to walk in terms of my equal rights, I have always been, and will forever be, cloaked, wrapped, drenched in a privilege John Lewis fought decades for, yet still died without.
Yes, John Lewis was the son of a sharecropper who died as a man of power and influence in the House of Representatives of this country, but he served and died knowing he was there alongside closeted cowards, and open racists who had also risen to power. He died a Black man in America. And as a Black man in America, the struggle is far from over, regardless of what money, stature, or influence he may attain.
At the tender age of 16, well, tender for those of us who never knew the privilege that we moved in, Lewis was already championing civil rights for Black people. He was attempting to petition to have the whites-only library desegregated. He never stopped and was soon the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, organizing voter drives, sit-ins. He was an original Freedom Rider at the age of 21, testing the dangerous racial segregation of the South.
He spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the age of 23.
He was only 25 when he marched across the bridge in Selma, in a peaceful protest for voting rights. March 7, 1965, a year before I was born, he was enduring tear gas, water cannons, attack dogs, and being beaten to unconsciousness. It became known as Bloody Sunday.
“You saw these men putting on their gas masks and behind the state troopers are a group of men, part of the sheriff’s posse, on horses. They came toward us, beating us with nightsticks, trampling us with horses, and releasing their tear gas. I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick. My legs went from under me. I don’t know how I made it back across the bridge but apparently a group just literally took me back.” - John Lewis
As his approach to civil rights began to include his own entrance into politics, he always remembered the words of Martin Luther King - "get into trouble, good trouble." He gave a commencement address at Bates College in 2016 and passed on that wisdom, “you must find a way to get in the way and get in good trouble, necessary trouble … You have a moral obligation, a mission, and a mandate, when you leave here, to go out and seek justice for all. You can do it. You must do it.”
That the fight still goes on is a shameful reflection on what has been allowed to go unchecked in this nation since its founding. We built this nation on the backs of stolen human beings. White people enriched themselves while those considered 3/5s toiled for them. Our founding documents were written in a time when they were not even remotely included in the words "all men are created equal."
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Declaration of Independence was written by white men who owned Black men and women and children. And we sit in 2020 seeing the grim reminders daily that far too many in this country have never moved beyond that mindset where the color of one's skin dictates they are lesser.
Quite frankly, I would posit that I am lesser for every moment I have let go by without thinking of my privilege; that I am lesser for every opportunity I have allowed to slide past to demand more for those who have less; that I am lesser for knowing, loving, adoring so many Black people in my life, yet standing in 2020 and watching them still fighting for rights, for respect, for breath.
John Lewis was not lesser. John Lewis represented everything one should aspire to in a march to be more, do more, see more, change more. John Lewis was the better angel of our natures.
John Lewis died watching protests still taking place nightly across this country. He died watching the words Black Lives Matter be prominently painted onto streets. He died watching young people of all shades, economics, religions, and regions take to the streets TOGETHER. Young people who are sickened by the inaction of their elders, repulsed by what passes for leaders at our highest levels. Young people who are actively being brave because people like Lewis went before them, showing them the way, leaving footsteps in which to march.
Young people getting into good trouble.
On February 15, 2011, John Lewis received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, bestowed by President Barack Obama. A fitting honor for a man who had dedicated his entire life and being to the singular cause of equality, to civil rights for all. Contrast that with Trump giving it to Rush Limbaugh and you can be forgiven for seeing red and feeling the bile rise in your throat.
One of my favorite quotes of his is this: "When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something, you have to do something."
It is what I feel in my gut, what I have always felt. It is how I raised my children. Passivity in the face of inequity is simply agreement, whether you actually agree or not. It is why my inbox is regularly filled with the most vile screeds, and even threats against me. It is why my child knows what tear gas feels like in his eyes, what rubber bullets feel like hitting his body.
More people should not have to bleed and cry, be broken or die trying to make things right in 2020. Yet here we are. Protesters facing secret police in Portland. More videos of Black people being knelt on by police as visions of George Floyd go through their frantic minds. Racism is in its death throes and it will not go quietly. Nor will those who cling to it, its emblems, its false sense of superiority.
Good trouble will win out in the end.
That John Lewis has crossed his final bridge before that could happen is heartbreaking. But he left us the roadmap, the footsteps to follow as we approach the biggest bridge still left for us to cross.
"If you're not hopeful and optimistic, then you just give up. You have to take the long hard look and just believe that if you're consistent you will succeed."
We will not give up. We are finally marching together and we will get to the other side, Mr. Lewis. We promise. Rest in power.
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