Calhoun County Community leaders and members joined together at the Jim & Shirley Justice Center to celebrate the life and legacy of the late Congressman John Lewis on the 4 year anniversary of his death - The John Lewis National Day of Commemoration and Action.
"Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring."
Speakers shared personal experiences and stories about John Lewis - some humorous and others quite serious and solemn.
Mayor McCrory brought his book Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement that John Lewis authored and inscribed to her.
Stories were shared about his share-cropper parents not wanting him to go to school - and him hiding and running to catch the bus to school.
In 1998, local Attorney Cleo Thomas was on the Lillian Smith Book Award Committee and presented the Lillian Smith Book Award to Lewis for Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.
Jim Williams: The best way of respecting and celebrating his life and legacy is to press our Senators to pass 4 pieces of legislation:
John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act fixes the problem the Supreme Court created in Shelby v. Holder by eliminating preclearance of any change in voting laws in states and localities that had shown a pattern of racial discrimination. Preclearance was a key tool in the 1965 Voting Rights Act that protected minorities. The SCOTUS ruling in 2013 unleashed a wave of voter suppression laws in at least 19 states and 400 similar bills introduced in 49 states. In August, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965 VRA on the national wave of reaction to the vicious attack on Lewis and other marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma, AL, on March 7, 1965. Before he went
into the hospital, Lewis called President Johnson urging him to act.
The Freedom To Vote Act will set basic national standards for voting, stop partisan gerrymandering on both sides of the aisle, and strengthen the American people’s faith in our democracy. Same day voter registration and automatic voter registration expand access to the ballot.
Native American Voting Rights Act protects the rights of Native Americans to vote and addresses barriers experienced by voters living on tribal lands. Examples are lack of street addresses some states require for voter registration and not having polls located where many people can access them.
Washington D.C. Admission Act would give D.C. residents the voting representation in Congress and full local self-government . It would create a new state, Washington, Douglass Commonwealth.
John R. Lewis bio https://www.johnrlewisinstitute.org/about-john-r-lewis
John Robert Lewis was born in rural Pike County near Troy, Alabama, on February 21, 1940. He was the third of ten children born to sharecroppers. He wanted to be a preacher and at age five, he preached his first sermon to his family's chickens.
In 1955, Lewis first heard Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio closely followed King's Montgomery bus boycott. At age 15, Lewis preached his first public sermon. At 17, he met Rosa Parks and met King at 18.
Troy University denied Lewis entry, and he wrote to King about suing the university for discrimination. King warned that could endanger his family. Instead, he began his education at a small, historically black college in Tennessee. He graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, and was ordained a Baptist minister. He eventually earned a bachelor's degree from Fisk University, also a historically black college, where he was a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
As a student in Nashville, Lewis became active in the civil rights movement. He organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and took part in many other civil rights activities as part of the Nashville Student Movement. These efforts successfully desegregated the city's downtown lunch counters. He also helped organized bus boycotts and other nonviolent protests to support voting rights and racial equality.
Lewis was arrested and jailed many times during these activities. He said it was important to engage in "good trouble, necessary trouble" to achieve change. He maintained this credo throughout his life. While a student, Lewis attended nonviolence workshops at Clark Memorial United Methodist Church led by the Rev. James Lawson and Rev. Kelly Miller Smith. Lewis and other students became dedicated to nonviolence and practiced it for his whole life.
In 1960 the Supreme Court declared segregated interstate bus travel unconstitutional. In 1961 the Freedom Ride originated to pressure the federal government to enforce this federal policy. Lewis was one of the first 13 Freedom Riders. Seven blacks and six whites planned to ride buses from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans to challenge segregated seating. Angry mobs beat Lewis and other Freedom Riders, and they were arrested. At age 21, Lewis was the first Freedom Rider assaulted in Rock Hill, South Carolina. After extreme violence in South Carolina and Alabama, the Kennedy Administration called for a cooling-off period, with a moratorium on Freedom Rides. Lewis was imprisoned for 40 days in the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary in Sunflower County.
In 1963, Lewis became chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Along the ML King, Lewis was one of the speakers at the Lincoln Memorial in the March on Washington. Lewis and SNCC played a large part in organizing Freedom Summer, which led to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In 1965 Alabama state troopers badly beat Lewis when crossing the Selma Bridge. Photos of the attack created national outrage and quick passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In 1981 Lewis was elected to the Atlanta City Council. In 1988, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and was re-elected 18 times. Throughout his time, many considered him ‘the conscience of Congress.’
In 1988, Lewis introduced a bill to create a national African American museum in Washington. Each Congress he reintroduced the bill, which finally passed in 2003. The museum opened in September, 2016.
After the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in 2013 in Shelby v Holder, Lewis led efforts to restore and expand that law.
In December, 2019, Congressman Lewis announced that he had pancreatic cancer. He stayed in the Washington D.C. for his treatment. He died on July 17, 2020. Work continues to pass the Voting Rights Act now named in his memory.
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