by Justin Teoh
In a Reddit discussion thread on the passing of Congressman John Lewis, user u/Ganesha811 succinctly summarizes his legacies as follows:
“At 21, John Lewis was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders. He was beaten for his efforts.
At 23, he helped organize and spoke at the March on Washington.
At 25, he led marchers across the Pettus Bridge and was beaten for his efforts.
At 30, he began leading the Voter Education Project and helped register 4 million people to vote.
At 46, he was elected to Congress for the first time.
At 63, he led protests against the Iraq War.
The same year, his years of effort to get funding for a Black Smithsonian museum were realized.
At 76, he led the House Democratic Caucus to sit-in in the Capitol in protest of our failure to address
gun violence.
And every day between 1961 and now, he has been inspiring others to take action as well.
We are never too young or too old to make a difference.”
Soon after reading it, I immediately picked up March (Book #3) — a young-adult graphic novel of Lewis’ — out of admiration of his commitment towards various issues of social justice. The book recalls his pursuit to pass forward the eventual 1965 Voting Rights Act, just after the march to Washington, as chairman of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) at the time, along with key contributors who share the same sentiments, such as Malcolm X, Bob Moses, and Fannie Lou Hamer. In its lifetime, the interracial activist group as a whole aimed to address issues that were also present in the status quo at the time such as participation in the Vietnam War, feminism, and non-violence.
I will not cover the minutiae of these events extensively because as a key historical figure in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, there are already numerous primary sources and posthumous eulogies available on the internet; a previous article has suggested that a genuine understanding comes from further voluntary study. Nevertheless, one key takeaway of Lewis’s role as a civil rights leader — one that is worth sharing — is his persistence in the face of it all. Throughout the timeline depicted in the graphic novel trilogy, John Lewis has been arrested 24 times; when painstaking efforts start to bear results, politicians would stop them on their tracks; police force would mobilize in large groups, would rather block toilet access, disperse protesters violently and mock their purpose than to keep the peace; three Freedom School teenage volunteers were even killed and had their bodies hidden. He faced opposition from white supremacists from all castes of society, to which the emotional visual language of the graphic novel only serves to accentuate the harm inflicted.
Yet John Lewis pressed on: SNCC still fundamentally changed American life and politics. It leaves people to wonder: how can someone possess such willpower even after having to go through all that?
Still, John Lewis was very much human. After the 1964 Democratic Convention — when President Johnson was re-elected — the members of the SNCC were burnt out, citing feelings of cynicism and mistrust of the government after months of preparation. Harry Belafonte, a longtime supporter of the SNCC, saw that the members needed a temporary getaway and decided to invite them to a three-week trip to Africa to give talks about their efforts in the South. John Lewis was inspired after seeing other black people running the infrastructure and conducting like-minded activism, even more so when he coincidentally met Malcolm X in Kenya.
In conversation, Malcolm X gave John Lewis some much-needed perspective, in that they have to switch their focus from race to class; their struggle in the United States is inseparable to those of Africa and beyond, and that this struggle has been ongoing among the poor and oppressed for the longest time.
With this insight, the team kickstarted their efforts once again. Things did not drastically improve overnight, if not worse due to the growing usage of violence from the opposition. When Malcolm X was assassinated, Lewis’s colleagues refused to hold the march from Selma to Montgomery, so he decided to go at it alone and lead Selma, without the participation of even Dr. King. John Lewis nearly got killed in the process — having been beaten nearly unconscious at that march — but it was clear to him that to bring about an action he would have to escalate the march into Washington. Unfortunately, one of the white activists did not survive, and this brought attention to President Johnson, leading him to address this injustice on television to the nation, granting injunction for the march to go into Washington. When it was completed, the Voting Rights Act won landslide support and was signed.
To me, this superhuman feat is still something that we can still accomplish. Central to Lewis’s story is not just the visible changes, but the constant sharpening towards his mentality. In the face of unjust racial superiority, John Lewis was probably well aware that the purpose he set out to achieve was in line with the countless American recitations of being “endowed by the Creator certain unalienable Rights”, that which is right shall always be right and that which is wrong shall always stay that way, that virtue is not independent of conscience. The whole black community was watching but he did not stand at the podium as a titular representative figure, but also as a community member, as one with the people, open to further re-education and understanding from other perspectives. From then the impossible became not far from realization.
Perhaps this could be a mental configuration to which we can all learn, if not be reminded of it from time to time. If the current happenings in this Anthropocene epoch would soon prove to be a cumulative reiteration of a then biblical prophecy (ending with the Noah’s Ark), then it is time that we stop and examine ourselves, steer towards the path of what is truly right — almost as if to subscribe to the Daoist belief that there is an overarching order that governs the world and the cosmos — and dynamically shape ourselves to be an inspiring example towards others while feeling good. The account of John Lewis is filled with ups and downs, but in time I believe that this form of self-discovery would manifest itself in a state of euphoria, driving yet again ourselves to go forward; not just in activism, but any other pursuit.
For the many meanings behind Kendrick Lamar’s album being titled “To Pimp A Butterfly”, I believe that collectively, we would have our very own butterfly effect, sparking something one flap at a time.