What Is The Course Of The John Lewis Civil Rights Movement

As a boy, John Lewis heard about the Montgomery Bus Boycott only a few miles away… the beginning of a Movement that he would become a leader within. In the 1960s, an eager college student who lived in an area that was very hostile to his race, John Lewis, became one of the most prominent Civil Rights leaders. While Lewis was growing up and becoming an adult in the harshness of the southern states of the United States of America, he realized the laws against his skin color, Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws were laws against African Americans that prevented them from having rights that any human should have. He worked with his fellow college classmates as they had both shared the same type of work ethics and drives. The group worked well together
because they had acknowledged the issues in current Civil Rights organizations and fought to get bigger results faster, something that the other organizations could not accomplish. He is also known for being one of the founders of the nonviolent student movement as he was an avid supporter of nonviolent protesting. Lewis was able to open the nation’s eyes to the violence that innocent African Americans encountered while attempting to vote when he led the Bloody Sunday March which directly resulted in the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. John Lewis’s most important contribution to the Civil Rights Movement was his leadership of the Selma to the Montgomery March in 1965, especially during “Bloody Sunday”. From a young age, John Lewis was interested in issues of justice and equality. Lewis was born to sharecroppers and lived on a farm in Troy, Alabama on February 21, 1940. Lewis was one of ten children that all had to work on the farm. Some of his earliest memories include listening to Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio and one day after being inspired by King, he tried to baptize one of his chickens(Lewis 31). Lewis remembered celebrating the win of the Brown v Board of Education. He recalls it as a “day of jubilee” for his family(Hill 17). He also remembered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, very close to his home, as being an extremely big event for such a small Alabama town but little did he know that this was the beginning of a monumental movement in history. Lewis was a student of the American Baptist Theological School(ABTS) but was then intrigued by Troy State University. Lewis applied to Troy State as a transfer student and after not hearing anything back for a month, he decided to contact Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and Fred Gray for advice and overall help, financially and legally. The day after the meeting, Lewis wrote to King explaining that his parents told him that they were not going to sign the lawsuit as they were scared of the retaliations by white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan(KKK) but was sure to let King know that he would definitely be coming back to Nashville in the fall. Lewis’s aspiration and determination to get more involved in the Movement led him to James Lawson’s nonviolent protesting workshops.
James Lawson held workshops about Sit-ins in Nashville, a peaceful way to protest for integration in public places, that began Lewis’s nonviolent protesting journey. In 1958, while Lewis was attending church, there was an announcement about a workshop led by James Lawson. Lewis, immediately, volunteered and enjoyed the workshops very much. Lawson taught the students all about Sit-Ins. Sit-ins involved going to a public restaurant or store asking for service and not leaving until they serve you (which rarely happened). Lewis comprehended Lawson’s talks and said “His words liberated me. I thought, this is it… this is the way out”(Lewis 78). Lawson talked about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, War Resistance, and Gandhi; those topics excited and intrigued Lewis(Lewis 77). Lawson educated first, but then made the students practice. They role-played mock sit-ins. One or two people would be the peaceful protesters and then the others would be the angry mobs. The mock mobs would call them names, scream at them, and try to break their will as best as they could(Lewis 80). Lewis said that the protesters were to “disarm our attackers by connecting with their humanity” and “find love for our attackers”(Lewis 82). After the mock sit-ins, Lawson had his students do test sit-ins. Test sit-ins were a way to practice a real sit-in but without the violence because they would leave when asked. It prepared the students so that they knew what to do in any situation. Lawson’s teachings gave the students skills that used for their work in the Sit-Ins.
After being taught by James Lawson, Lewis led others in the Nashville Student Movement in holding Sit-Ins. The students of James Lawson’s workshops created the Nashville Student Movement in 1960 whose main leaders were Diane Nash and Lewis, himself. The students’ goal was to get integration and equal treatment in public places. The first Sit-In was held by four African American men from North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1, 1960. The next day, more students came which grabbed the media’s attention(Lewis 96). This spurred the Nashville Student Movement to act. Lewis participated in his first Sit-In a week after the first ever Sit-In. On February 7, Lewis sat down at a Woolworth’s counter along with other SNCC members. At this Sit-In, the students faced mocking, jeering, name-calling, and yelling. The members of the Sit-In, stayed the entire time and did not leave until after the white harassers left. The students were lucky this time because they did not have to deal with any violence(Lewis 94). The Sit-Ins did begin to face physical harassment later on. Lewis was even arrested for the first time after police demanded that he get up from a lunch counter but he didn’t(Lewis 101). The groups encountered violence and humiliation at every restaurant they sat in at. Lawson’s teaching of trying to get rid of the hate for the attacker was very important to the students because when they were attacked, they did nothing besides trying to stay seated until after they were taken off their chair when they would go limp. Lewis created a set of rules for the students to follow when holding a Sit-In called the Nashville Student Code. The Sit-Ins were very important because it was one of the first times that the media showed the innocence of the African Americans and how all they wanted was to be treated equally. This violence upset the country and got Americans from areas other the South interested in the Movement and had them wondering if they could help. Slowly public places became integrated after store owners gave up on segregation because of a sudden decrease in the restaurants’ income as many seats were taken for long amounts of time without any pay. The destruction of the restaurants by angry mobs also cost a lot of money to repair. The Sit-Ins did not result in a law but did achieve some public integration and attention. Participation in the Sit-Ins exhilarated Lewis and motivated him to pursue more work with the Movement.
Lewis was in attendance at the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC), a major accomplishment for the entire movement.
The students of the Sit-Ins thought that most of the civil rights organizations were not active enough or handling the situations correctly(Carson, “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee”). On Easter weekend of 1960, Ella Baker held a conference to create a student-run group, which became known as SNCC, at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina(a location very close to where the Sit-Ins had been happening). SNCC was a group of ready and willing students that worked together to plan peaceful protests and events to combat segregation and discrimination in the South. The group included students of James Lawson’s workshops, students that participated in the Sit-Ins and other ambitious students. The aspect that made SNCC so accomplished was the fact that the leaders of the organization were extremely eager students that wanted progress and results immediately. Lewis became the chairman of SNCC from 1963 until 1966. Lewis led SNCC to some of the largest civil rights
victories.
Lewis became the public face of SNCC during the 1961 continuation of the Freedom rides.
Lewis was motivated after such a great achievement that he became a Freedom Rider. The Congress of Racial Equality(CORE) decided to peacefully protest to force the federal government to enforce two Supreme Court decisions that had ruled segregation in interstate buses and facilities was unconstitutional(Morgan v Virginia(1946) and Boynton v Virginia(1960)). Black and white riders were to travel from Washington D.C to New Orleans, testing the segregation laws when they would refuse to get up when they crossed into segregated states, but later on, when violence broke out in Alabama, CORE had to cancel the Freedom Rides. The first incident was in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Lewis and his colleague, Albert Bigelow were attacked and knocked unconscious for trying to use an all-white bathroom. Then on May 14, 1961, a Greyhound bus encountered a group of 100 people in Anniston, Alabama. The mob attacked them and one of the buses was firebombed. Then in Birmingham, the bus was attacked by twenty men who beat the passengers. The police force was supposed to help the riders but gave no protection at all and was sometimes even with the KKK(some of the police were even KKK members themselves). This was just the first Freedom Ride but the brutality was already so extreme. In the end, the Freedom Rides did result in the Interstate Commerce Commission ban on segregation. The rides did continue, however,
to protest the violence and stand up to the KKK. King “saw how provoking white southern violence through nonviolent confrontations could attract national attention and force federal action”(MLK, “Freedom Rides”). The main goals of the Freedom Rides were to draw attention to the barbarism of the white southerners and to get a ban on interstate segregation, both of which they achieved. The Freedom Rides were especially important for John Lewis because he had become the only person to start and end the Freedom Rides as a rider. Lewis’ work with the Movement did not stop with the Freedom Rides but continued to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
As a new leader of SNCC, Lewis spoke at one of the largest marches in Civil Rights history, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The goal of the March was to get more and better job opportunities for African Americans and to fight for freedom for all people. There were about 200,000 people of different races and religions that marched; it was one of the biggest marches up to that time(MLK, “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”). The main speakers were the “Big Six”, the leaders of the most powerful Civil Rights organizations including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis himself. MLK’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech was also made at the March. Lewis spoke as he was the new chairman of SNCC and as the youngest speaker of the whole day. Lewis’s speech was very militant to start but then begrudgingly let King and others edit his speech although the final result was thought of as very controversial. His speech said that the proposed Civil Rights Act was “too little and too late”(MLK, “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”). Although the speech may have upset some, the speech got Lewis’s name out as a feisty and eager leader, something that a lot of people were looking for(MLK, “Lewis, John(1940-)”). All of the speakers delivered speeches that talked about the importance of the Civil Rights Act and how they have to fight together for their rights. These speeches directly pressured the U.S government to pass the Civil Rights Act. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was only leading up to Lewis’s most important contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.
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