His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope

This chapter covers the first eight months of 1963, when Martin Luther King led a coordinated, nonviolent campaign against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Children and teens were among the demonstrators hit by the blast of fire hoses and pinned down by police dogs, some of the tactics that the police used against them. Meacham describes in detail an NBC television documentary about the 1961 campaign to integrate Nashville’s lunch counters, which featured Lewis. He writes, “Lewis’s example, then, informed the mission of the young people of Birmingham who were facing Bull Connor’s police force in 1963” (123).

Things came to a head in June of that year, drawing the Kennedy administration into the fray. On June 10, the New York Times published an article quoting Martin Luther King as saying that Kennedy had exhibited a “failure of leadership.” The next day, Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, visited the University of Alabama for a stunt to protest the recent federal ruling to integrate the school. Two Black students arrived on campus to register, and Wallace stood in the doorway of the building they needed to enter. Kennedy federalized the National Guard, who cleared a path for the students.

Kennedy addressed the nation on television that night, saying that Americans faced a “moral crisis” and exhorting the nation to fulfill its promise of equal rights for all citizens. Later that night, Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was shot and killed as he returned to his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Amid the events of that tumultuous week, Lewis had a personal milestone that would have a great impact on his life: He was elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Lewis’s new job was centered at SNCC’s headquarters in Atlanta, not far from the Baptist church where Martin Luther King was now co-pastor with his father. Meacham describes Lewis’s life during this time as simple and totally focused on his work. In addition, the author outlines how the South of the 1960s was rooted in the events of the 1860s—when the failure of the Reconstruction after the Civil War led to Jim Crow laws. Martin Luther King felt that a large demonstration was needed to bring about justice for Black Americans by persuading Americans to demand changes in the South. To do so, he began planning for a march on Washington, DC.

When Kennedy caught wind of the planned march, he summoned King, Lewis, and others to meet with him in hopes of convincing them to call it off. He was afraid it would imperil his civil rights legislation, and he asked them to put their efforts into helping him pass that instead. However, King and his team were not swayed, arguing that both were needed, and the march was set for August 28. Among the speakers was Lewis, who had to tone down his speech because the organizers feared that some of the wording was too blunt and could jeopardize the impending legislation. He agreed but still demanded in his speech that “[w]e want our freedom and we want it now” (141), adding that if the legislation did not pass, there would be marching throughout the cities of the South. Nonviolence, however, remained front and center, as he added, “But we will march with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today” (142).

Chapter 5 covers the events of late 1963 before focusing on 1964. In September 1963, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killed four young Black girls, rocking the civil rights movement and the nation. After so much violence against them, Black people were questioning the efficacy of nonviolent tactics. In his funeral sermon for the girls, however, Martin Luther King held the line: “We must not become bitter, nor must we harbor the desire to retaliate with violence” (151). It was an issue that would be revisited with increasing frequency as time went on.

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated just two months later, Lewis felt unspeakable grief, grouping Kennedy with all the others killed and assaulted in the movement. Meacham explains some of Kennedy’s contradictions regarding civil rights before examining his successor’s record. Lyndon B. Johnson started his political career much less amenable to civil rights than he was by 1963. Still, as a Southerner, he was suspect in the eyes of African Americans as he began his presidency.

In 1964, the focus of Lewis and others turned to voting rights. Now that public places were largely integrated, civil rights workers wanted to ensure that Black Americans were not blocked from voting. This was key, they felt, if they were to gain political power—not just to vote in white leaders who sided with them but to put Black leaders in office as well. That summer, the SNCC joined other organizations to work on voter registration in Mississippi, where only five percent of the Black population was registered to vote, and Lewis went down to help lead the effort. This became known as “Freedom Summer.”

The KKK and other groups advocating white supremacy tried to oppose and frighten them. The threats turned violent at the end of June, when three civil rights workers disappeared after their arrest. Assuming they had been killed, Lewis and his colleagues scoured the nearby countryside for their bodies, which were found in August buried at a dam. Like the Birmingham church bombings, this event prompted some to call for abandoning the strategy of nonviolence. Meacham describes this debate in some detail, presenting the stance of more militant members of the movement like Malcolm X.

That summer, the civil rights legislation that Kennedy first proposed and Johnson then pushed made its way through Congress. After delays by southern senators, it was finally passed in June and signed into law in early July. Segregation was now outlawed throughout the nation in all public places, and voting rights were reinforced. Martin Luther King was at the signing, and Lewis was invited but chose to stay in Mississippi. As much work remained, Lewis said, “‘We felt glad, but not joyous’” (171).

At the end of August 1964, the Democratic National Convention was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and controversy dominated it. One of the tasks of the civil rights workers in Mississippi was to create an integrated group of delegates to send to the convention in place of the usual all-white, segregated delegates. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was established for this purpose, and delegates were chosen, most of whom were Black. However, at the convention, they were refused standing, and the segregated group kept their seats. A standoff ensued, in which President Johnson sided with the all-white delegates. He felt that this was not the place for an internal battle, after the hard-fought battle to pass the Civil Rights Act. Moreover, he thought that seating the MFDP would lose him Democratic votes in the South and that his Republican opponent might win the election in November. In the end, the MFDP was turned away, disillusioning many of those in the movement—including Lewis—who looked to the political process as the proper path to pursue their objectives.