The Time I Spent The Night With John Lewis

Georgia's 5th District Congressman, Democrat John Lewis, has been much in the news in the past few days; principally for his outspoken view on the relative legitimacy of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States.  "I don't see this President-elect as a legitimate president," Rep, Lewis told NBC News' Chuck Todd on Friday. "I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton."

Congressman Lewis also said he planned to skip Trump's inauguration next week, which he said would be the first such ceremony he would not attend since coming to Washington, in 1986.

I first met John Lewis back in the Summer of 1963, when we shared a room at the Foster Quadrangle, on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus.  I was attending the Southern Student Leadership Conference, sponsored by the United States National Student Association, and John was invited to address one of our civil rights seminars.

I.U. was crowded that Summer, and there was a shortage of rooms for visiting guests.  (The year before, I was visiting for a debate tournament, and was assigned sleeping quarters in the Sigma Chi fraternity house.  The only bed available was in the Hoagy Carmichael Bedroom; something of a local shrine, where Carmichael allegedly penned “The Sweetheart Of Signa Chi.”)  My dorm room at the Foster Quad had two beds, and I gladly agreed to share with our distinguished guest.

Of course, I knew a little about John Lewis before he arrived in Bloomington. 

I heard his speech at the 1963 March on Washington (although somewhat eclipsed by Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech), and I knew he was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). 

John was a short young man, and painfully shy, with a pronounced lisp.  Once he got warmed up, however, he would become passionately loquacious.  After dinner, we sat up into the wee morning hours, discussing civil rights, politics, and Philosophy.

John was a student at Nashville’s Fisk University, and I was a student at Louisville’s Bellarmine College, and we both were majoring in Philosophy.  Naturally, no two philosophers in the same room will be able to agree on everything, but I found that John and I had a great deal in common.

We talked about the Freedom Rides, and the time he tried to enter a whites-only waiting room in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and got beaten up pretty bad by two white men.  Later, in Anniston, Alabama (birthplace of Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell), his Greyhound Bus was firebombed.  He was again beaten in Montgomery and in Birmingham, where he was hit over the head with a wooden crate.

I can vividly remember being impressed with both his courage and humility.  I had been involved in a few civil rights demonstrations, but I was a white man (still am, come to that), and never really felt my life or even my physical safety was in danger.  John, on the other hand, was obviously willing to sacrifice everything for the cause of justice.

I remember reading, a couple of years later, on March 7, 1965, about that horrible “Bl00dy Sunday,” on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma, Alabama, when John Lewis and Hosea Williams led 600 marchers and were attacked by mounted police firing tear gas and swinging night sticks.  John got his skull fractured, and refused to go to the hospital until he could appear before the television cameras and implore President Lyndon Johnson to intervene and quell the mayhem. 

Shortly after that, John was invited to the White House to meet with President Johnson, and was in the room when LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act.

John and I lost touch over the years, and our political views are today much more divergent than they were in the Summer of 1963.

On Saturday, President-Elect Trump tweeted (Teddy Roosevelt had his “Bully Pulpit,” FDR had his “Fireside Chats,” and Trump has his tweets.) that Congressman Lewis "should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results."

This is not entirely fair.  Atlanta is a wonderful town, with warm and friendly folks.  True enough, Georgia's 5th Congressional District has crime and poverty rates that are much higher than the national average, and currently has an 8.2 percent unemployment rate.  But laying the blame for all the 5^th’s shortcomings at the feet of John Lewis, would be like blaming conditions in the Bronx on Donald Trump.  I recently visited Atlanta’s Coca-Cola and Civil Rights museums, and I will take them over the Bronx any day.

I am sorry my old friend has decided to boycott the ceremonies inaugurating our country’s 45^th president.  And, I am disappointed that he has expressed reluctance at cooperating with the new Republican administration.

Nevertheless, I will always remember John Lewis for his bravery and courage under fire.  I may no longer agree with many of his political stands, but I consider myself honored to have had the opportunity to meet and talk with him.  I have a spare room in my house, and John is welcome to use it any time.