Honoring John Lewis

I was impressed today with how many of the people I know had met John Lewis and gotten their picture taken with him. All of these people are hardcore activists, political folks, union leaders, so it’s no surprise they might have crossed paths with John Lewis, talked to him, stood gratefully with his arm around them.

I never did any of that. I wished I had. I just watched John Lewis on TV. The demonstrations and protests in the South, the bridge violence, Bull Connor’s dogs and fire hoses trained on people, I saw all that on the news when I was a teenager in the sixties. I saw the lunch counter sit-ins, the coverage of the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. And I remember Viola Liuzzo, a woman from Detroit who left her family to join up with the movement in Alabama was then killed by the Klan. I remember the Freedom Riders. I remember being awed by their fearlessness. I remember knowing, in my heart of hearts, that I could never have that kind of courage.

So, John Lewis was a hero of mine. A person of unimaginable courage and fortitude, persistence and humility. His death is a huge loss. But he had to die. Everybody has to die. And then there have to be new people who step up and there are those new people, I see them marching and leading, we don’t know all their names yet but there is new courage, new inspiration, and that is cause for rejoicing if you ask me. John Lewis wasn’t the only great leader of our time – there are others. There are others coming.

So what I did today – because I couldn’t post a picture of me with John Lewis although I truly wish I could have – what I did was make donations to two local nonprofit organizations that do the hard, day to day work of voter registration and voter turnout: BLOC (Black Leaders Organizing Communities) and Souls to the Polls Milwaukee. I think if you want to honor John Lewis, the honoring should be about getting it done, about, as he said, making a way out of no way. Everyone eligible to vote voting on November 3rd, what better way is there to honor John Lewis than that?