Congressman John Lewis addresses supporters of Democrat Jon Ossoff as they wait for the poll numbers to come in for Georgia's 6th Congressional District special election in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Aluka Berry
C.T. Vivian at The Summit for Change in 2015 in Washington, D.C. PHOTO: JP Keenan / Sojourners
ROCK THE VOTE & U.S. VOTE FOUNDATION
REP JOHN LEWIS D GA, a man, a Christian, a leader I have admired since I became aware of him many years ago. It is an awareness I am thankful for because it reinforces my belief in Christian liberation theology, in the Christianity of the Beatitudes, in faith based civil and human rights and the Christianity of forgiveness and humbleness. I was not aware of the Rev. C.T. Vivian but from what I have read and heard since his death on the same day Rep Lewis died, Friday, 17 JUL 2020, it is clear he and Rep Lewis were cut from the same cloth. Blessed are the meek and blessed are the peacemakers, surely Christ will declare to John Lewis and to C.T. Vivian "Well done my good and faithful servants!" when He welcomes them home. Thank you both for all you did, for all you sacrificed for all of us. Godspeed John Lewis. Godspeed C.T. Vivian. We are missing you already. From Sojourners.....
FAITH LEADERS AND ACTIVISTS HONOR JOHN LEWIS’ LIFE OF ‘GOOD TROUBLE’
BY
JUL 18, 2020
John Lewis, a pioneer of the civil rights movement and long-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives, died on Friday at age 80 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Lewis kept up the fight for civil rights and human rights until the end of his life, inspiring with others with calls to “never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
“He loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise,” former President Barack Obama said in a statement. “And through the decades, he not only gave all of himself to the cause of freedom and justice, but inspired generations that followed to try to live up to his example.”
A son of sharecroppers and a protege of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., Lewis led sit-ins to integrate all-white lunch counters, was one of the original “Freedom Riders” who integrated buses, and suffered a skull fracture while demonstrating for Black voting rights in a savage beating by a nightstick-wielding white Alabama state trooper during an incident now called “Bloody Sunday.”
Lewis was just 18 when he first met King and was present at many of the civil rights movement’s seminal moments. He was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, hoping for a land where Black people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Lewis, the last surviving speaker who was present at that speech, maintained the fight for civil rights until the end of his life. In 2016, Lewis led a sit-in by House Democrats to demand a vote on gun regulations. Last year, Lewis led the House's efforts to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore portions of the Voting Rights Act that were gutted in a 2013 Supreme Court ruling. The Senate has yet to take up the bill.
Lewis made his last public appearance in June, as protests for racial justice swept the U.S. and the world. Using a cane, he walked with Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on a street by the White House that Bowser renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza, which had just been dedicated with a large yellow mural — large enough to be seen from space — reading “Black Lives Matter.”
Tributes to Lewis quickly began pouring in from other politicians, including both Democrats and Republicans, as well as faith and justice leaders.
Sojourners president and founder Jim Wallis tweeted that “times with [Lewis] were among the greatest moments of many of our lives. He showed us the way again and again; and his truth will keep marching on.”
“Our nation and world lost a true hero,” said Adam Russell Taylor, executive director of Sojourners. “Congressman John Lewis spent a life well lived getting into ‘good trouble.’ I will forever be inspired by his courage and grateful for his tireless activism. Rest well.”
Lewis “spoke unflinchingly, stood unrelentingly, lived completely and died nobly” in the face on injustice, said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, in a statement. Barber quoted the words Lewis spoke at the 1963 March on Washington: “To those who have said, ‘Be patient and wait,’ we must say that we cannot be patient. We do not want our freedom gradually but we want to be free now.”
Artist and activist Bree Newsome, who earned national attention in 2015 for scaling the flagpole in front of the South Carolina state house to remove the Confederate flag, offered gratitude for Lewis’ lifelong work, but warned politicians against platitudes that ignore ongoing issues of racism today.
“I don’t want to hear politicians share their fave John Lewis quote,” she tweeted. “I want to know what they’ll do TODAY about police beating people in the street TODAY & the attack on voting rights that is happening TODAY & the racism that’s killing us TODAY.”
Lewis’ death immediately follows the death of fellow civil rights leader C.T. Vivian, who died early Friday morning.
“I’m finding myself in the deepest gratitude that John Lewis and CT Vivian got the chance to become elders,” tweeted activist and educator Brittany Packnett Cunningham. “To pass on the wisdom. To pray for us. Grow us. Lead us. They chose freedom work that easily shortens one’s life. And we got to keep them for a while. What a blessing.”
The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church, echoed the sentiment: “May John Lewis and C. T. Vivian Rest In God’s Peace,” he said in a tweet, “and may we, like them, rise up to claim the high call of love, never to cease laboring for a just and humane society and world, always showing compassion, and daily living humbly with God until all God’s children are free.”
Reuters reporting contributed to this story.
The online editorial staff comprises Sandi Villarreal, Dhanya Addanki, Daniel José Camacho, Jenna Barnett, Heather Brady, Christian Smutherman, Kayla Lattimore, and Candace Sanders.
C.T. VIVIAN WANTED US TO REMEMBER: THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT WAS DEEPLY SPIRITUAL
BY
JUL 18, 2020
The Rev. C.T. Vivian was a civil rights leader and ordained pastor who never stopped fighting for justice; throughout his life, he believed that his work was inspired, guided, and sustained by God.
When Vivian passed on July 17 in the early morning – to be followed in death later that evening by fellow civil rights veteran Rep. John Lewis, the earth moaned, as did many people who loved both men and the work they did.
While researching C.T. Vivian’s life, I had the honor of sitting with Vivian for hours, hearing about his life and work, including how he trained and organized people in nonviolent direct action before the height of the civil rights movement of the ’60s. But what I found so striking in the stories he shared with me was his belief that the movement – and everything that he and others did in it – was spiritual.
“I’m serious about the religious side of this,” said Vivian, who studied at American Baptist College and served as the pastor of Historic First Community Church in Nashville.
“Everything we did in the movement was spiritual; that’s why it was nonviolent,” he said. “I don’t remember a time in my life where the religious part of my existence did not play a major role in everything I did.”
Vivian shared that as a child, he loved going to church. He would go with his grandmother, but sometimes his mother did not want him to go. Whenever that happened, he recalled, he was very sad. He described one Sunday when he had gotten dressed for church, but his mother decided he would not go. Mortified, he ran out of the house, and said he lay down in a rut close to the street to “let the cars run over me.” His grandmother saw him lying there, sent him into the house, and took him to church with her. His mother never forbade him to go to church with his grandmother again.
He always felt God with him, he said. “Several times I was close to death, but God intervened,” he said, recalling how, in a 1964 “wade-in” protest at segregated beaches in St. Augustine, Fla., they were met by angry white mobs. “Before I knew it, I was in the water, and I knew I was in trouble because I couldn’t swim.”
One member of the mob got to him and pushed his head under the water. Terrified, Vivian said he believed that he was going to die that day, but “a police officer was there and pulled the attacker off me.” Vivian said he saw the officer for a second after he was able to stand up but when he looked around, the officer was gone. “I never saw him again.”
Vivian came from a family of people who believed in God and in justice. He described how his great-great grandfather escaped from the plantation on which he had worked for years to join the Union Army during the Civil War. Vivian recalled how his great-great grandfather was fiercely proud and never took the name of his owner. “After slavery, we placed ourselves in the world by choosing our own names,” said Vivian. They believed that God was with them as they faced almost certain retribution for doing things their way.
My friend was one of the original 1961 “Freedom Riders,” riding on the buses with them through the South, singing, praying, and working to bore a hole through the system of white supremacy. By this time, the sit-in movement had overtaken the country. Young kids were excited about participating in the Freedom Rides, despite the violence they were sure to meet. Vivian said that it was at that time that he realized “you can’t let violence stop the movement.”
But his sense of God’s presence was also heightened during that time.
He recalled how the bus full of Freedom Riders stopped in Jackson, Miss., so that the youth could go to the bathroom. As they got off the bus, they were all arrested, including Vivian. They were taken to the Jackson City Jail and were there for about a week before being transferred to Parchman Prison. While in Parchman, Vivian was beaten with a belt that had sharp steel spikes. Vivian recalled the pain that came with each blow that ripped his skin to what felt like to the bone.
But then, suddenly, the beating stopped. Vivian, bleeding profusely, was taken back to his cell by a guard who held a .38 pistol to the back of his head. Vivian, feeling something on the back of his neck, turned around and stared the guard in the eye – something Black people were not supposed to do. “I don’t know why I did that,” he said, but the guard looked as though he was trying to decide whether to shoot Vivian – and then, suddenly, dropped the gun and walked away.
One of the Freedom Riders, a white youth, was released on that day but not before he saw the bloodied Vivian and the incident with the guard and the gun. When he got out, he contacted movement leaders who had connections to the federal government, including President John F. Kennedy. The guards had violated an agreement made with the government that none of the Freedom Riders would be beaten, and, out of anxiety of how the public would react to this news of the beating , they released them all.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Vivian. “This movement was spiritual. God was in it from the beginning. When he and the others got back to Nashville, Vivian said he preached a sermon titled, “Saved by the Blood.” It was his blood that had freaked out the government, but it was Jesus’ blood that had saved them all, he said.
During our interviews, Vivian repeated over and over that I should stress the spiritual core of the movement. “This was truly a religious experience,” he said. “People need to know that.”
And so, my dear friend, I will work to do just that. May you rest in peace and in power, cradled in the arms of the One who sent you to this earth to help set the captives free.
Rev. Dr. Susan K. Williams Smith is an ordained minister and the founder of Crazy Faith Ministries in Columbus, Ohio. She serves on People For the American Way Foundation’s African American Ministers In Action. She is working on an authorized biography of civil rights organizer C.T. Vivian.
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