The Courage of John Lewis

Caption

This weekend, a statue of civil rights icon John Lewis will be unveiled in Decatur.

Credit: Ron Harris, AP

Chuck Reece: The region I talk about, the American South, has much to atone for. America’s original sin — the enslavement of kidnapped Africans — was committed largely by our white ancestors in this region.

By telling stories, by shining lights into the hidden places of Southern history, I try to enlighten those who do not know about it. And I hope to touch the hearts of those who still deny our region’s truths. But sometimes, the enormity of that history and its legacy depresses me. On those occasions, I ask myself a question: Can this region I love ever be redeemed?

Back in 2018, I got the chance to ask that question to a person who indisputably had the right to speak on it: U.S. Congressman John Lewis. He did not hesitate a millisecond before he answered me.

John Lewis (from the Bitter Southerner Podcast): The South can be redeemed, and the South will be redeemed. When you're traveling through the South today, you see an unbelievable place in the making.

Chuck Reece: That was the last in-studio interview Congressman Lewis ever did, according to his policy adviser Andrew Aydin, who was with him that day. Later that year, that noble warrior for human rights was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He died in July of 2020.

I was so deeply inspired by the faith with which John Lewis answered me. He was 78 years old when I spoke to him. He had spent his entire life fighting for the freedom of his people. Alabama state troopers had beaten him on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. They fractured his skull on that Bloody Sunday, when he was only 25.

But he never stopped marching for civil rights. He never lost faith that human beings could rise above hatred for each other. Until the end of his life, he was teaching children that responding to violence with non-violence — that countering hatred with love — would help them grow into their best selves.

For 114 years, a monument to the Confederacy stood on the courthouse square in Decatur, Ga. It was just one of hundreds installed around the South by the United Daughters of Confederacy in the early 20th century. The UDC were the primary exponents of what we today refer to as the “Lost Cause” mythology, the idea that the cause of the Civil War was something other than the maintenance of slavery.

Today, a statue of John Lewis stands in the place of that old obelisk. I imagine it will stand far longer than the monument to hatred it replaced. Because courage, of the sort that John Lewis possessed, will always outlive cowardice.

Come see us anytime at SalvationSouth.com, where you can read stories written by and for Southerners who keep the faith with John Lewis.

Salvation South editor Chuck Reece comments on Southern culture and values in a weekly segment that airs Fridays at 7:45 a.m. during Morning Edition and 4:44 p.m. during All Things Considered on GPB Radio. Salvation South Deluxe is a series of longer Salvation South episodes which tell deeper stories of the Southern experience through the unique voices that live it. You can also find them here at GPB.org/Salvation-South and wherever you get your podcasts.