Standoff on the Edmund Pettus Bridge: On March 7, 1965, civil rights protesters attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the state capital, to draw attention to the issue of voting rights for African-Americans. Led by Hosea Williams (at left front in the dark raincoat) and John Lewis (at right front in the light raincoat), the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. There they encountered Alabama state troopers and local police officers who ordered them to turn back. When the protesters refused, the police tear-gassed and beat them. Over 50 people, including Lewis, were hospitalized.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union joins millions of people across the country in mourning the death of Civil Rights icon and United States Congressman John Lewis. Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends, and all of those whose lives were touched by Congressman Lewis’ life and work.
Lewis passed away on July 17 at the age of 80 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was one of the few surviving members of Dr. Martin Luther King’s inner circle. The loss of Congressman Lewis was especially hard because it came at a time when the issues that he championed his entire life—civil rights, opposition to police brutality, voting rights, and economic justice—are once again front and center of the current national debate.
“John Lewis was a true hero and warrior for the working class,” said ILWU International President Willie Adams in a statement released shortly after Lewis’ death. “He was fearless, committed, and unwavering in his dedication to racial and economic justice. In the streets of Selma and the halls of Congress, John Lewis fought for us all. The torch has truly been passed to a new generation of activists who today are continuing the fight for civil rights. May the memory of his life-long dedication and commitment to social justice and the struggle for freedom be a light that guides us through these challenging times.”
Coming of age in the “King years”
Lewis was born into a sharecropping family in 1940 in Troy, Alabama. His life was shaped by his lived experience in the segregated Jim Crow South and his coming of age during the early years of the Civil Rights movement. “I grew up about 50 miles from Montgomery. Growing up there as a young child, I tasted the bitter fruits of racism. I saw the signs that said white men, colored men; white women, colored women; white waiting, colored waiting,” Lewis said. “And I would ask my mother, my father, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents why. They would say, ‘That’s the way it is. Don’t go getting in trouble.’”
Lewis was 14 years-old when years of organizing and legal work by the NAACP culminated in the Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. He was only one year older than Emmett Till when Till was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 and the shocking photos of his desecrated body appeared in the Black magazines Jet and the Chicago Defender. As a young man, Lewis was inspired by Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 and he spent hours listening to the speeches of Dr. King on the radio. Lewis was an unfailing supporter of the rights and dignity of working-class Americans and a fearless champion for liberty and civil rights throughout his entire life. He was one of the original Freedom Riders in the summer of 1960 during which he faced violent attacks by angry racists. March on Washington Lewis helped to organize and also spoke at the historic 1963 March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King delivered the “I Have A Dream” speech.
Lewis was not only the youngest speaker at the March; as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he also represented the most radical organization. “To those who have said, ‘Be patient and wait,’ we have long said that we cannot be patient,” Lewis said that day. “We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now!” Lewis challenged not only racists and segregationists but also liberal allies who he believed did not go far enough in eradicating injustice. I
n an early draft of his speech for the March on Washington, Lewis criticized the Kennedy Administration’s civil rights bill because it was “too little and too late. There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality” the draft said. The language was later changed to lukewarm support for the bill out of respect for more conservative Civil Rights elders who asked for the change. Lewis courageously put his body on the line in pursuit of racial justice and equality.
He and Reverend Hosea Williams from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led a nonviolent march in 1965 across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, headed toward Montgomery. The pair led over 500 peaceful marchers into a line of violent racist police who attacked the group with clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas while Lewis urged everyone to kneel and pray. Lewis was so severely beaten in the “Bloody Sunday” incident that he had to be hospitalized with skull fractures and nearly died from his injuries.
ILWU family
John Lewis had longstanding connections with the ILWU that were forged over many decades because of a shared dedication to racial and economic justice, lifelong support for unions and workers, and the fact that his youngest sister, Rosa Tyner, was a member of ILWU Locals 10 and 91 for 23 years. As a member of Congress, Representative Lewis was a champion of working people and a strong supporter of collective bargaining rights. He advocated for a living wage, called for raising the minimum wage and supported Davis-Bacon and other prevailing wage laws. He called for and strengthened workplace safety standards. Rep. Lewis was in all ways a true friend to longshore, maritime, and warehouse workers.
“There is a lot to learn from the life of John Lewis,” said ILWU International Vice President Bobby Olvera. “He fought against the forces of segregation at a time when civil rights were unpopular with white Americans. He responded to hate and violence with courage and hope and the belief that working-class people, united, could make America a better place for us all.”
“Civil rights are labor rights and labor rights are civil rights,” said ILWU International Secretary-Treasurer Ed Ferris. “John Lewis shared the same values upon which our union was built: The right of workers to collectively organize for better wages and conditions, and the right of all workers to be free from discrimination under the law and in the workplace. His leadership will be missed.”
Black Lives Matter
In an essay published in the Atlantic in 2014 in the aftermath of the 2013 killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman and the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, Congressman Lewis tried to explain the emergence of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the unrest that erupted in Ferguson and other cities at the time. His essay also illuminates the current crisis.
“Many Americans find themselves at a loss to understand the depth of the anger and frustration of the protestors. It might be worthwhile for them to read a speech Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on April 14, 1967, at Stanford University,” Lewis wrote. “King describes what he calls the ‘other America,’ one of two starkly different American experiences that exist side-by-side. One people ‘experience the opportunity of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all its dimensions,’ and the other a ‘daily ugliness’ that spoils the purest hopes of the young and old, leaving only ‘the fatigue of despair.’ The Brown and Garner cases themselves are not the only focus of the protestors’ grievances, but they represent a glimpse of a different America most Americans have found it inconvenient to confront. “One group of people in this country can expect the institutions of government to bend in their favor, no matter that they are supposedly regulated by impartial law. In the other, children, fathers, mothers, uncles, grandfathers, whole families, and many generations are swept up like rubbish by the hard, unforgiving hand of the law.”
Honoring Lewis’ legacy
To honor Congressman Lewis’ life and work, there have been calls and online petitions to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge after Lewis. Edmund Pettus was a Confederate general and leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. The bridge has become synonymous with Congressman Lewis and the Civil Rights movement and the “Bloody Sunday” incident. Others would also like to see concrete policies enacted, not just a symbolic change. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, sponsored by 47 Democrats and one Republican, was introduced in the House days after Lewis passed away.
The Act would require that any state with a history of voting discrimination within the past 25 years seek federal approval before making any changes to its voting procedures. It would also mandate that any state obtain clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court before making any changes that would burden voters of color, such as strict voter ID laws or closing polling places in areas with large numbers of minority voters. The Act is identical to legislation that was introduced by Lewis last year to restore the Voting Rights Act and passed by the House in December.
Republicans refused to take up the bill in the Senate. It has now been re-introduced and the name changed in honor of John Lewis Reverend William Barber, the civil rights activist and a co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, said in a recent interview, “Imagine if we had listened to John Lewis? What if, instead of simply mourning, people chose to live the life that he lived? It’s time we start to emulate their lives, not just in some memorial fashion, but in actual policy and political evolution and transformation.”