Like his mentor Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis had a dream. Amid the turmoil and violence of a segregated South and a nation embroiled within the wrestle for racial reconciliation, Lewis envisioned and championed what he known as a “Beloved Community” in America, “a society based on simple justice that values the dignity and the worth of every human being.” In his charming John Lewis: In Search of Beloved Community, Raymond Arsenault narrates the mesmerizing story of Lewis’ evolution from a Civil Rights activist to an eminent congressman who by no means misplaced sight of his imaginative and prescient for a simply and equitable society.
Drawing on archival supplies and interviews with Lewis and his mates, household and associates, Arsenault traces Lewis from his childhood in Troy, Alabama, the place he day by day witnessed the indignities and violence of racial segregation. Steeled and impressed by the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he entered American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, and started his storied activism in earnest. Lewis and his contemporaries integrated the rules of rightness and righteousness—what their instructor James Lawson known as “soul force”—with strategies of nonviolent resistance. Arsenault paperwork Lewis’ participation within the Freedom Rides, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Selma to Montgomery marches and his advocacy for the Voting Rights Act. After King’s 1968 assassination, Lewis’ optimism turned to despair; he had a sense, Arsenault writes, that “maybe, just maybe, we would not overcome.”
But that didn’t final. Elected to Congress in 1986, Lewis went to Washington with a legacy to uphold and a dedication to hold on the spirit, objectives and rules of nonviolence and social motion. He was all the time disillusioned by self-serving politicians and their infighting, and he devoted his profession to constructing coalitions amongst opponents. In a 2020 speech, Lewis uttered the remarks that cemented his legacy: “We cannot give up now. We cannot give in. . . . Go out there, speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
With John Lewis Arsenault presents the primary complete biography of the icon and serves as a becoming bookend to Lewis’ personal autobiography, Walking With the Wind. The work gives an inspiring portrait of a person whose imaginative and prescient and ethical braveness propelled him to share his perception within the Beloved Community and encourage generations.
Discussion about this post