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“The late U.S. Rep. John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the final time Sunday as remembrances continue for the civil rights icon. The bridge became a landmark in the fight for racial justice when Lewis and other civil rights marchers were beaten there 55 years ago on ‘Bloody Sunday,’ a key event that helped galvanize support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act.” AP News
Both sides praise Lewis and his legacy:
“Lewis was beaten 40 times by cops, state troopers, or hostile mobs; he spent 31 days in Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm prison. He was the first chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]… His fellow Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich was wont to remind conservative, white audiences that Lewis bore literal scars from the fight for civil rights — rights that were promised in the post–Civil War amendments, but took a century, and the efforts of the brave, to make real. R.I.P.”
The Editors, National Review
“Lewis was considered one of the greatest student sit-in leaders by the sheer power of his example. He kept showing up at the front of protests no matter how many times he was assaulted. The power of that kind of persistence sometimes gets lost when people talk about that era. People overestimate the power of a great speech. They think the movement was powered by Aaron Sorkin-like moments: Impossibly eloquent leaders unfurling brilliant speeches skewering their opponents…
“But King's ‘I Have a Dream Speech’ wouldn't have mattered much if the movement didn't keep up the pressure of demonstrations through campaigns in Mississippi the next year and Alabama the following year. It wouldn't have mattered much if President Lyndon Johnson didn't use all of his legislative cunning to steer the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act… Persistence is more important than eloquence. Lewis proved that.”
John Blake, CNN
“The legacy of Lewis, the civil rights giant who married righteous anger to a fierce commitment to peacefulness and patriotism, doesn’t need yet another tribute added to the innumerable paeans that have been flowing ever since his July 17 death. He’ll get one from me nonetheless, if only to emphasize that white, Southern conservatives also can and in many cases do revere him and the example he set…
“He profoundly disagreed with us conservatives about which policy solutions were best for today’s world. And understandably, considering what he went through, he seemed to see racism in the aggregate where some of us would ascribe ills to other causes. That is all immaterial. Lewis was a man who maintained the integrity of his beliefs, living how he preached, treating individuals with utmost courtesy and openness of heart, and, of course, standing courageously for racial equality.”
Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner
“Like King, he did not believe in inevitable progress. Lewis did not think that those who exercise unjust power would give up their privileges easily. But the willing embrace of sacrifice in a good cause could, in his view, break down the resistance to justice. Redemptive suffering, Lewis wrote, ‘opens us and those around us to a force beyond ourselves, a force that is right and moral, the force of righteous truth that is at the basis of all human conscience.’…
“Lewis was addressing the primary decision that all of us face in pursuing our ideals. Is the answer to hatred the mobilization of equal and opposite hatred? Or does love have the peculiar power to break and change the hardest hearts? Lewis staked his life, again and again, on the second option.”
Michael Gerson, Washington Post
Other opinions below.
“We had differences with Lewis on policy… But these differences are trivial compared to the significance of Lewis’s life and contribution to America. He famously forgave George Wallace, Alabama’s segregationist Governor in the 1960s, in an example of reconciliation all of us should emulate. He never gave up his belief in nonviolence, despite the violence used against him. He never lost faith in the capacity of American democracy, despite its flaws, to strive for a more perfect union…
“These days much of the left dismisses the racial progress America has made. They would rewrite history to say America was founded to maintain slavery and continues to enforce white supremacy. This ignores the central principle of the Declaration of Independence—’all men are created equal’—that inspired the slavery abolitionists and the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution. The civil-rights movement that John Lewis helped to lead vindicated those principles.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“As many did in the 1960s, John Lewis could have chosen to dedicate his activism to violence, to burn buildings, loot stores, tear down statues. In retrospect, his belief that speaking the truth, taking the punches, and showing America by example the grace and goodness inherent in all people regardless of race seems hopelessly naïve. But, by God, it worked…
“Few men have ever been born into such discrimination and depravation only to overcome it and reshape a country they loved even though it treated them unfairly. America has many flaws, and maybe it always will, but Lewis showed us is it also the place where hard work, dedication, and passion can make any of us leaders and can make all of us free.”
David Marcus, The Federalist
“Lewis never balked at breaking from Democratic leaders. He did so during Bill Clinton's welfare reform efforts. He stood alone in supporting gay marriage when Barack Obama did not. But perhaps more prescient in recent months were televised mic drops of Lewis putting aside partisanship in the most contentious of political times to reassert civility…
“Even as the House was in the thick of the impeachment inquiry regarding Trump's dealings in Ukraine, Lewis gave a heartfelt goodbye to his longtime friend, Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson. Such grace was par for the course for Lewis, who had Republican friends and admirers from Rob Portman to Kevin McCarthy, as he convinced allies across the aisle to join him on his regular pilgrimages to Southern sites of his civil rights crusades.”
Tiana Lowe, Washington Examiner
“Unlike today’s made-for-TV ‘civil disobedience’ arrests, Lewis endured the real thing — actual jail time, many times, for daring to desegregate ‘Whites Only’ lunch counters, movie theaters and bus stations. Yet he and his compatriots stuck to truly peaceful protest despite the brutal treatment. John Lewis may have lost his battle with cancer, but he never lost the fight for civil rights and human dignity. His voice of reason, embrace of difference and desire to heal are sorely needed in our fractured nation.”
Editorial Board, New York Post
“In June, the NYPD cited the general threat of looting to justify repeated violent attacks against protesters who were charged with loitering-level ‘crimes’ like unlawful assembly and violating curfew… In Buffalo, officers enforcing a curfew shoved over a 75-year-old man, causing a severe brain injury. Police in Philadelphia bombarded a group of protesters who were trapped against a hill with tear gas, the city’s mayor explained, because they had threatened public safety by walking on a highway…
“The police crackdowns Lewis was subject to were, like those happening now, justified by authorities as the necessary maintenance of public order, with no distinction made between righteous resistance and criminality. When activists were arrested for sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters (Lewis led several in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1960), they were charged with crimes like trespassing… The ‘Bloody Sunday’ march in Selma was nominally illegal because Alabama Gov. George Wallace said the presence of protesters on a state highway would be disruptive to ‘the orderly flow of traffic and commerce.’… the United States’ journey toward fulfilling its ideals of democratic equality did not end in the 1960s.”
Ben Mathis-Lilley, Slate
“Lewis’s long career of activism reminds us that fundamental change does not come without conflict — and that ‘nonviolent’ does not mean ‘nonconfrontational.’ When Lewis traveled through South Carolina with an integrated busload of Freedom Riders or organized demonstrations in Alabama to demand voting rights, he was challenging authority and defying police. When a group he was leading was given an official order to halt or disperse, he ignored it and pressed on. He regularly violated Jim Crow laws and was arrested some 40 times…
“He marveled at the Black Lives Matter protests because of their unprecedented size and diversity. He saw this movement as ‘so much more massive and all inclusive’ than the protests he had led and witnessed in his youth — and allowed himself to hope that this time, there would be ‘no turning back.’… Lewis lived, fought and triumphed by the words of Frederick Douglass: ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.’ How, then, should we remember this great man? Not with fuzzy, feel-good encomiums but with a clear-eyed look at his monumental accomplishments and the work still left undone.”
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-SC) writes, “He and I had talked about the current iteration of the movement — its intensity, its diversity. We felt that a sustaining movement for ‘liberty and justice for all’ had finally arrived. We cautioned, however, that sloganeering and soundbites could precipitate headlines that destroy the headway being made by the BLM movement as they did with SNCC. I am hopeful that this generation of protesters will heed John’s admonition that ‘rioting, looting, and burning is not the way. Organize. Demonstrate. Sit-in. Stand-up. Vote. Be constructive, not destructive.’… My favorite Old Testament scripture is Micah 6:8, ‘do justly, be merciful and walk humbly.’ It must have been John’s as well.”
James E. Clyburn, USA Today
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