| November/December 2000
An Interview with John Lewis
Liliane Baxter: What were the formative experiences that shaped your life? What do you consider the roots of your nonviolence? John Lewis: Growing up in a very religious environment in rural Alabama during the Forties and Fifties, when I first heard the teaching of the great teacher, I accepted those simple truths about love. And years later when I heard about the philosophy of nonviolence, it was very much in keeping with the teaching of the great teacher. So it was not a paradox. I was an empty fountain ready to be filled with this idea. In 1955, when I was fifteen years old, I first heard Martin Luther King, Jr. talk and preach. I knew then that this was what I wanted. I thought about it, and I read everything I could about it. But it was not until I went away to school in Nashville in the late Fifties that I became immersed in nonviolence through meetings and FOR's representatives in Nashville the wonderful Jim Lawson and Glenn Smiley. During those early days in my journey toward nonviolence, I came to recognize the dignity and the worth of all human beings: that the human personality was something very sacred, and that we didn't have a right to abuse or to destroy it. You may despise the ways and the actions of a person, but you just have to love 'em. And love 'em. And see that person, in a sense, as a victim of tradition, of custom, or of environment, just like we all are. LB: You often talk about the Beloved Community. What is the Beloved Community to you? JL: I first heard about the concept of the Beloved Community through Jim Lawson. We used to speak about making Nashville a Beloved Community, a community at peace with itself. It is a sense of coming together to serve the common good. It's an idea, a process, something that you are forever striving toward. LB: Is that why when you were elected to Congress back in 1986 you called it a nonviolent revolution?
JL: Well, I think I said we have witnessed a nonviolent revolution. To some degree I think so. LB: Yours has been a remarkable journey. From being an outsider, a nonviolent civil rights protester and activist oftentimes breaking the law to being inside the political establishment, a US Congressman from Georgia's Fifth Congressional district, the chief deputy democratic whip. What adjustments have you had to make in these years, and what keeps you in Congress? JL: I see my involvement as an elected official as an ongoing part of my effort to build a Beloved Community. I don't think I've changed that much during the past fourteen years, since I've been in the Congress. I think we should have a Department of Peace. We should start teaching peace in daycare, in Headstart, in preschool, in kindergarten, elementary, in high school, then in college. It's a better way; it's a more excellent way. We must lay down the instruments of violence and war and pick up the instruments of love and peace and nonviolence. I've even introduced a piece of legislation where taxpayers would be able to take some of their tax money and say, "I want it to be used for nonviolent humanitarian purposes." Some members have signed on to that piece of legislation. I don't think we're at the point that we're going to be able to move it through the Congress, but it's helping to educate and sensitize people. LB: But you see this as a sign of hope? JL: I'm very, very hopeful. As a matter of fact, I work almost every single day with a group of members in the Congress: they're black and white; Hispanic and Asian-American; Democrats and Republicans; liberal and conservative. But we've been coming together, and we're having a dialogue on race. And I've taken many of those members back to Birmingham and Montgomery and to Selma. So these members are learning the work of the nonviolent movement. LB: This year was the third anniversary of the Congressional pilgrimage? JL: Yes. In a sense it may be called a journey of reconciliation, a journey in search of the philosophy of nonviolence. Many of them came south for the very first time. They traveled the path of the movement, and they sang the songs. In many cases when they walked into Dexter King Memorial Church in Montgomery where Dr. King preached, they broke down and cried. They stopped at the place where Rosa Parks was arrested, they went to Birmingham, and to the church where the four girls were killed, and they went to the Civil Rights Museum. Several of them broke down and cried, and I cried too. Then we went to Selma, and walked across the bridge, to know what happened there to people who used the philosophy of nonviolence: they didn't strike back, they didn't give into hate, they didn't give into violence. The state troopers beat us, they tear-gassed us, they trampled us with horses, thirty-five years ago. Now, thirty-five years later, we saw women and minorities as state troopers. They stood and saluted us, and then the governor of Alabama said, "Welcome home, John Lewis." The mayor, who thirty-five years ago called me an outside agitator, said, "You are one of my closest friends, you are the bravest man that I've ever known." This says something about laying down the burden of race, tension, and violence, and creating a sense of community. 
I really think the philosophy
of nonviolence had an effect upon the Before we left Birmingham, a middle-aged
white gentleman walked up to Many of my colleagues ask me from time to time, "Why are you not hostile?" And I say, "Hate, hostility, malice will destroy you; they will eat away at your very soul, your very essence. And it does not help to lead toward a greater sense of community, a greater sense of family." I speak a great deal about the possibility of building one house, one family. And you cannot build one house, you cannot build one family, you cannot build one community if you're not somehow consumed by the spirit of love. LB: You are co-sponsor of the resolution to have Congress apologize to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States for the wrongs committed against their ancestors who suffered as slaves. And this measure also includes that Congress recognize the wrongs of slavery by redressing them. What would be the appropriate redresses for slavery as you see it? JL: Well, in our country we had state-sanctioned slavery for so many years. And our government has never, ever apologized or issued a formal apology on behalf of the government of the American people. There's a lot of pain, there's still a lot of hurt. We need to get it out; we need to put all our cards on the table. What can we do to compensate, to amend? I have suggested on several occasions that the national government establish a national museum to tell the story of slavery. That's one thing. I don't see individual reparation in terms of dollars and cents. But I do see something like a national African-American museum in Washington, on the Mall. I think that would be one way to say, "This is to help make amends for what happened." But more than anything else, the psychological effect: it would free and liberate, I think, the spirit of all Americans. I think the great majority of Americans would say this is a great step toward building another bridge: the bridge of reconciliation, the bridge of creating the world house, the world family, the Beloved Community. LB: What things give you hope at this time in our history? JL: When I travel around this country and I've spent a great deal of time during the past two or three years traveling all over America people want to hear the message of love and nonviolence. They want to hear the story of the movement. How did it happen? Why? Why are we not talking about it? Young people come to me and say, we saw the video, Eyes on the Prize, we read your book, but we're not being taught this in school. When I was at the Democratic convention I literally couldn't move through the hall. They said to me, "You're my hero, I don't know how you did it." But it's not that I'm a hero. These young people see me as a symbol of what you can do when you use the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence when it becomes a way of life, and not just a technique, not just a tactic. LB: You've organized sit-ins at lunch counters, you were chair of SNCC, a very courageous and visionary group of young people. You spoke at the March on Washington in '63. You mentioned the Edmund Pettus bridge confrontation, which ultimately led to passage of the Voting Rights Act. There have been so many moments, lasting moments, that have come from the civil rights movement that inspire these young people to call you a hero. But what would you identify as the most lasting contributions of the civil rights movement? JL: It's more than just tearing down walls and barriers, more than ending segregation and racial discrimination in places of public accommodation. More than desegregating schools or gaining the right to vote. It imbued a whole generation of people with another way of doing things, with another way of thinking. America will never, ever, be the same, because of the civil rights movement. Today in America, people are not so quiet to just accept things as they are. Look at the women's liberation movement; the movement toward peace, to end the war in Vietnam, to try and get rid of some of our nuclear weapons and stop spending so much of our limited resources on bombs, missiles, and guns. There's a whole movement to let people be themselves: the gay rights efforts, the foreign workers, the Native American efforts; what has happened even with organized labor to some degree. Even in American politics. Much of it the techniques and tactics the backdrop for this is the civil rights movement. I think a whole cultural revolution has occurred, a whole way of thinking, a whole way of doing things. LB: And beyond this country? JL: "We shall overcome" became the rallying cry in eastern Europe, in South Africa, in Northern Ireland. People were organizing and taking lessons from the American civil rights movement. Even in recent years when we were dropping those bombs in eastern Europe, you had people going and standing on bridges, believing somehow and some way that by presenting their bodies, just standing there, that we wouldn't bomb them. It's amazing how just one anthem of a movement moved around the world. It's the power of nonviolence, the power of the human spirit. LB: And yet, while all of this is true, the United States is the largest distributor in the world of armaments, greater than all of Europe combined. How do you teach nonviolence in a culture that permits, and even values, violence and arms and guns? JL: That's why I indicated earlier that I think we must teach and preach the way of nonviolence. In spite of all these resources that have been spent on guns and missiles and bombs and I've said it on the House floor the people of the world are not inspired by bombs, missiles or guns, but by a commitment to nonviolence, peace, and freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press. The freedom, as Dr. King would say, the freedom to fight for right. He said the time is always ripe to do right. And I think that's what people are inspired by. Sometimes you have to sail against the wind. And we need a force in America of people committed to the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence who will speak to our political leaders, to the decision-makers, saying the way of more bombs, more guns, more missiles, is not the way. There is a better way. We must not give up, or give in, or give out. I believe we will get there. It's a long, long path to travel. The journey toward the Beloved Community is a journey of a lifetime. We have to convince people that it's not weak. The way of love, the way of nonviolence, is powerful and strong. In my estimation, there is nothing in the universe stronger than the human spirit. There's nothing stronger than the way of love, and it's a powerful force that no bomb, no gun, no missile, can stop. LB: In your book, Walking with the Wind, you concluded by talking about the spirit of history. Could you reflect on that? JL: I believe in that force, that power, which I call the spirit of history. On the march from Selma to Montgomery, as we moved our feet, as we walked, I think we were moving with the spirit of history. Sometimes in speeches I will say, "Whatever you do, walk with the wind and let the spirit of history be your guide." LB: Talking about guides and meditation, are there individuals or writings or spiritual practices that attune you, that help you in your work?
JL: Well, I pray a great deal. Sometimes I'm sitting on the House floor, waiting to speak, just sitting there listening or maybe in a committee meeting, and I pray. When you can sort of close everything out, literally shut off the world, prayer helps put you in tune with a power, with a force, much greater than anything. It helps to direct your path. One day in Washington, not too long ago, we had this big debate coming up on debt relief, primarily for third world countries, and doing something about the spread of AIDS in Africa. I hadn't prepared anything. I hadn't asked my staff to prepare anything. And I said to myself, I can't be silent. So there was a meeting with the black caucus, and I stood up and said we've got to stand up on this as a matter of life and death. When the issue came to the floor I stood up and I just preached. Some of the members said it was the best speech I'd ever given. Sometimes you just have to get in tune, you pray, and in the process you get in tune with the spirit of history. LB: I know that black/Jewish reconciliation is very important to you. I remember in Atlanta you were chair of the black/Jewish Coalition, and in Congress you're involved with your co-chair of the Congressional caucus on anti-Semitism. What is it about black/Jewish relations that makes you so passionate about it, and committed? JL: Well, I grew up in rural Alabama. When I was growing up, I would visit the little town of Troy from time to time, and there was a little department store called Rosenburg owned by a Jewish merchant. And from time to time, I would hear white people speak evil about this Jewish merchant. And to me, the way I heard it and I was very young, only nine or ten years old I knew there was something wrong. When they said "Jew," it sounded to me like saying "nigger." So I grew up as a child trying not ever to say Jew, which was really strange. I tried to say Jewish this, Jewish that, never saying or using the term Jew. Because it was, to me, like nigger because of the way I'd heard people pronounce it. And as I grew up, I was studying the Bible. And you know, you studied the Old Testament, you learned about the children of Israel. Then you learned the Negro spirituals, songs about Israel: "Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh to let my people go." So I started, as a child, associating the struggle of blacks with the struggle of the children of Israel. And I guess in high school and college I learned about the Holocaust, and the founding of the NAACP and the Urban League. Then in the civil rights movement, members of the Jewish community were involved. I grew this affinity for members of the Jewish community. And nothing, but nothing, has separated me from that affinity. During the height of the movement people were saying, our colored people are happy, they're satisfied. But it's those Jews, it's those damn New York Jews, that are disturbing them. It's those people in New York, in California, that have got these people all stirred up. And so many of my friends and colleagues and supporters in the movement, young people that I came to know very well, were not only young blacks and Protestants and Catholics, they were also Jewish. When I became chair of SNCC, I lived in this very poor section of Atlanta. My roommates were a young Jewish kid who grew up in Forest Hills, New York, and a Japanese-American. We were like brothers. When the three civil rights workers were killed, two were Jewish and one was African-American. And I think that to some degree the forces that were opposing the movement and the progress of African-Americans were the same forces that were directing that venom of hate and violence against Jews. The people that bombed the churches and the homes were the same people that were bombing the synagogues. Even today, I speak out against anti-Semitism and bigotry. When some African-American raised questions about Senator Lieberman, I said we should be the last person to raise any question about someone's religion or race. LB: And sometimes when you speak out against Minister Farrakhan, you also put yourself on the line in the black community who feel you should not speak out, if I understand it right. JL: Oh yeah, there have been occasions where there have been people who have said, "Why should I say anything against Minister Farrakhan when you speak about the Jewish community?" And other members of his group there was a guy named Khalid Muhammed who said some very vicious and nasty and ugly things about Judaism, and I spoke out. Even some of the most respectable leaders in the African-American community in Atlanta and in other parts of the country have suggested on occasion that I was too close to the Jewish community. I don't know how you can be too close to any human being. I think all human beings are my sisters and brothers, and I'm not going to discriminate against someone because they happen to be Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or gay or whatever. I'm just not going to do it. LB: Looking at the world today, what would be your charge to FOR? JL: You know FOR impacted me a great deal during my whole struggle toward the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. Many years ago, FOR put out a comic book telling the story of the Montgomery bus boycott with Dr. King, and I read it. For many years I had a copy. And then FOR had this little blue and white pamphlet that told the steps of nonviolence. All of that made it so simple. Well, I think FOR's mission is needed now more than ever before: To tell the same old story over and over again. The story of peace, the story of love, the story of nonviolence is never, ever too old to be told. Tell this story to help educate the rank and file, the masses, especially the young. Say to the third world, and say to the developed world: Use resources to feed people, to clothe people, to educate, to provide better health care, and not for more bombs and more missiles and guns. And take the message to members of Congress and to all leaders. Here at Emory University I'm supposed to keynote a big conference with an address on reconciliation. When you have colleges and universities as well as members of Congress inviting an Archbishop Tutu or a Jim Lawson to come and teach the way of reconciliation, this is saying something about the distance we have come. I dropped out of seminary and I gave up becoming a full- time pastor because I saw my ministry as much larger than a particular congregation or church. In a sense, today I see my ministry as preaching and teaching, educating, sensitizing a much larger congregation: the Congress, the American people. Because you do have some platform to speak from when you stand up and talk on the House floor; you reach millions of people by way of CSpan. I often tell the story about when I was growing up with my aunt, living in a "shotgun" house. I remember hearing the thunder roll, and I saw the lightning flash, and the fierce wind beat on our old house. People must keep the faith, hold hands, walk with the wind, to keep the house literally from blowing away: we walked to the part of the house that was most shaking; our weight kept it in place. We never gave up on that old house and we must never give up on the American house or what Dr. King called "the world house." We muse never give up, no matter how bad the storm.
|
||||
