Meaning Train

A fighter for love: John Lewis and an urgent map for the future

Donald Trump’s America is uncaring and coarse. To be sure, his treatment of immigrants and his insensitivity toward African Americans has damaged our country. As a nation, we need to come together and resist the exclusion of others. We need to realize we are all interconnected and are one human family. One way to bring us together is to look at American heroes who have risked their lives to make America a more humane place.

Civil rights leader John Lewis is one of those heroes.

John Lewis promulgates the idea that what affects one person affects us all. This concept is beautifully illustrated in Lewis’s book, “Across that Bridge.” Part memoir and part excavation of the meaningful ideas that fueled the Civil Rights Movement, the book is dedicated to any human who wants to transform our country.

Lewis grew up in a farm near Troy, Alabama as the son of a sharecropper. He was always a loving person as a result of a good family. His family was steeped in religion, and he had a solid belief in his innate self-worth.

While Lewis knew his own value, he nonetheless dealt with racist vitriol. His first encounter with racial injustice as a child when he and his father went to the town of Troy. Making the trip to sell his crops, his father was demeaned by whites. Moreover, Lewis saw Jim Crow signs across the town. Later, he read about the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. He was inspired by the possibility of integrated schools, yet his hopes faded as segregated schools remained.

Despite all these disparaging signs, Lewis later embarked on the voyage of his life, the civil rights movement, when he encountered Martin Luther King, Jr. When the Montgomery bus boycott happened, Lewis was a teenager. He read about, then heard King talk about, a Christian response to the injustice of segregation and disenfranchisement. Lewis identified with King, feeling he was answering his prayers about how to confront the trap of segregation. King discovered a way to “see the power of love made manifest more than anything, to see hate eradicated and wrong made right.”

Moved by King, Lewis eventually led the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in which scores of civil rights workers nonviolently traversed the South against Jim Crow and for voting rights.

Love and the idea of an inclusive beloved community undergirded the brave and innocent protesters. They met unthinkable violence with nonviolence. They revealed to the country that equality and suffrage are rights and to deny them is a crime against the human spirit. Lewis himself was beaten and jailed over 40 times. Yet his and other civil rights workers efforts transformed the nation with passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which ended Jim Crow and voter disenfranchisement respectively.

Love for Lewis and his fellow protesters was a combination of divinity and the truth that humans are innately good. Lewis described how the civil rights movement was already favored before it happened as God orders the world with a primordial goodness and care for fellow humans.

When white supremacists beat and jailed innocent protestors, they were living dishonestly. The truth that humans are joined together and are made to love one other was suppressed and obscured. Thus, the violence against the protestors damages the perpetrators just as much the victims. By using nonviolent tactics, the truth of human unity emerges.

In the decades since the civil rights movement, Lewis has received apologies from some of his white tormenters. He generously forgave them. This also is an emblem of love.

In the introduction to Lewis’s book, historian Douglas Brinkley relayed a moving anecdote. When asked whether he was a Republican or Democrat, Brinkley always says he is wherever Lewis stands.

In the present fear about what happens next for America, we should all heed Lewis’s decency and generosity. Looking at his example, we should stand up to nativism and racism. We should advocate for measures that will help people not divide them. Indeed, we can strengthen the social safety net and promote policies that give everyone access to economic independence. As education offers innovation and opportunity, we should raise teachers’ salaries to help students grow. With efforts like these, we can make our country a kinder place. Let love and empathy endure.