Former « Face the Nation » Moderator Bob Schieffer honors the former Georgia Democrat
John Lewis was a share-cropper’s son, born in 1940 in a part of rural Alabama that was so rigidly segregated that he had seen only two white people when he reached his sixth birthday.
He wanted to be a preacher and he practiced his sermons by preaching to the family chickens. As he later joked: « When I looked back, some of those chickens would bow their heads, some of those chickens would shake their heads, they never quite said Amen, but I’m convinced that some of those chickens in the 40’s and 50’s tended to listen to me much better than some of my colleagues in the Congress. »
It was not what John Lewis said but what he did that changed America. An activist from his teen years when he heard Martin Luther King on the radio, he was arrested more than 40 times, beaten and severely injured as he took part in sit-ins at segregated southern restaurants and later was one of the Freedom Riders who risked their lives by simply sitting in seats reserved for whites on interstate buses.
By the time King made his famous speech in Washington, Lewis had become chairman of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee.
« To those who have said, « Be patient and wait, » we have long said that we cannot be patient. We do not want our freedom gradually »
At 23, he was the youngest speaker that day and delivered a powerful speech even though organizers deleted his most powerful line which they feared would offend President Kennedy.
