http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/02/19/1257819/he-advocates-good-trouble.html
U.S. Rep. John Lewis, one of the 1961 Freedom Riders who led lunch
counter sit-ins, tells students to make good stands.
By David Perlmutt
dperlmutt@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Friday, Feb. 19, 2010
John Lewis knew he was talking to students, so he came to Charlotte's
Central Piedmont Community College on Thursday with a simple prod.
His generation of students, he told them, "got in the way and got in
trouble - but good trouble."
Against their parents' wishes, they sat at "whites-only" lunch
counters in Southern dime stores asking for service and refusing to
leave until they got it. They rode buses into the Deep South to test
a Supreme Court ban on segregated bus stations. They marched to vote.
Many were beaten, and some died for it.
Much good came from their "trouble-making" - segregated restrooms,
hotels, theaters and restaurants were banned after the 1964 Civil
Rights Act; literacy tests and poll taxes were outlawed by the Voting
Rights Act a year later.
"When people are not treated right, you have an obligation to do
something about it," said Lewis, the 12-term U.S. House member from
Georgia and civil rights warrior who walked arm-in-arm with the
movement's titans.
" ... So get in the way, get in trouble - but good trouble."
The program was put together by CPCC dean of libraries Gloria Kelley,
a friend of Lewis and his wife, Lillian.
The school showed an excerpt from the 2007 documentary "Come Walk in
My Shoes" that centers on Lewis' activist years, his friendship with
leaders Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph David Abernathy, and a
congressional pilgrimage he led to the movement's battlegrounds.
A calling to organize
He grew up on a farm in Troy, Ala., wanting to be a minister. He
often preached to the family chickens.
He went to college in Nashville, Tenn., where he led lunch counter
sit-ins in 1960.
Soon King brought him into his fold, and Lewis' star quickly rose. In
April 1960, he helped organize with Charlotte's Charles Jones the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Shaw University in
Raleigh. In May 1961, he was one of 13 Freedom Riders (seven blacks
and six whites) who rode two buses through the South testing a U.S.
Supreme Court decision declaring segregation in bus and rail stations
unconstitutional.
Lewis' bus made a stop in Charlotte, then the next day in Rock Hill.
As he and another rider tried to enter the "white waiting room," they
were attacked by a group of young whites.
Lewis told the audience that last year one of the attackers came to
his congressional office to apologize.
Elwin Wilson, now 73 and still living in Rock Hill, admitted he was
the one who beat up Lewis, and had carried a heavy burden of guilt.
Lewis accepted his apology. They've become friends.
A liberating friendship
Wilson has said Lewis' friendship "liberated me." He's spent the last
six months talking to church groups, black and white, and keeps a box
of letters from around the world with stories of how his apology
changed their lives. "I think God's leaving me here to do what I'm
doing," he said.
Lewis told the CPCC students that Wilson was the only attacker to
apologize. He said Wilson's gesture has made him "a better human."
"I will never forget his courage to do what he did," said Lewis, who
turns 70 on Sunday. "And I hope people seeing us together - whether
in Washington, Rock Hill, or wherever - will inspire other people to
say: 'I'm sorry, I apologize.' There's nothing wrong moving toward
reconciliation. It's powerful; it's redemptive."
Down payment on a dream
The movie excerpt stopped at the March 1965 march for voting rights
from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery. Lewis was at the lead when state
troopers and police clubbed and tear-gassed marchers on the Edmund
Pettus Bridge outside Selma. Lewis sustained a skull fracture from a
billy-clubbing. "I thought I was going to die that day," he said.
After the movie, the audience asked questions, many focusing on King.
He was asked how far the country has progressed toward fulfilling
King's dream of a unified America, particularly after the election of
its first black president.
"It's important for all of us to take a great deal of pride in the
distance we've come," Lewis said. " ... The election of Barack Obama
is not a fulfillment but a major down payment in Martin Luther King's
dream. There are still too many problems left behind."
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