lewis

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

John Lewis and the masks Black preachers wear on the public stage

U.S. Congressman John Robert Lewis was a Black preacher, inescapably so. Like his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the long-standing congressman was an ordained Black Baptist minister. It meant that he not only knew how to parse legislative briefs but also ancient biblical texts and extrapolate wisdom from them to address social issues of great urgency. For Christians like Lewis, preaching, though not an end in itself, is a means by which God reminds a society of God’s concern for community wellness, life, human dignity and freedom in a less-than-perfect world. Preaching, in their understanding, tells the truth about suffering in the contexts of fear and death. Ultimately it declares that evil and despair have an appointed end. Because of this, as John Lewis said i...

How the images of John Lewis being beaten during ‘Bloody Sunday’ went viral

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

VIDEO REELS

How the images of John Lewis being beaten during ‘Bloody Sunday’ went viral

On March 7, 1965, Alabama state troopers beat and gassed John Lewis and hundreds of marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. TV reporters and photographers were there, cameras ready, and the violence captured during “Bloody Sunday” would go on to define the legacy of Lewis, who died on July 17. I’m a media historian who has written about television and the civil rights movement. One of the remarkable features of the era’s media environment, dominated by the relatively new medium of television news, is how quickly certain events could roil the conscience of the nation. Confrontations between police and protesters happened frequently during the 1960s. But a particular set of circumstances ensured that the images coming out of Selma galvanized politicians and citizens with r...

John Lewis traded the typical college experience for activism, arrests and jail cells

24Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

John Lewis traded the typical college experience for activism, arrests and jail cells

As an 18-year-old student attending a training session for activists at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, John Lewis stuttered and struggled to read. A visiting professor mocked his stammered speech and “poor reading skills” and dismissed Lewis’ potential as a “suitable leader” for the burgeoning movement. Famed activist and organizer Septima Clark rose to his defense and her support of Lewis paid off. The unassuming teenager from the backwoods of Troy, Alabama, became a giant of the Black freedom struggle and, ultimately, would go on to serve more than three decades in Congress. He died on July 17. Enthralled by ‘Social Gospel’ Lewis enrolled in American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, mainly because it charged no tuition, but also due to the prof...

John Lewis and C.T. Vivian belonged to a long tradition of religious leaders in the civil rights struggle

20Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS, Religion

John Lewis and C.T. Vivian belonged to a long tradition of religious leaders in the civil rights struggle

With the deaths of Rep. John Lewis and the Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian, the U.S. has lost two civil rights greats who drew upon their faith as they pushed for equality for Black Americans. Vivian, an early adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died July 17 at the age of 95. News of his passing was followed just hours later by that of Lewis, 80, an ordained Baptist minister and towering figure in the civil rights struggle. That both men were people of the cloth is no coincidence. From the earliest times in U.S. history, religious leaders have led the struggle for liberation and racial justice for Black Americans. As an ordained minister and a historian, I see a common thread running from Black resistance in the earliest periods of slavery in the antebellum South, through the c...