His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope

This Supreme Court decision prohibited segregation in interstate transportation and related facilities. The purpose of the Freedom Rides in 1961 was to test the enforcement of this decision in southern states, as individual states continued to uphold segregation in bus facilities like waiting rooms and restrooms. The violent reaction to the Freedom Rides by southern authorities illustrates that the decision was slow in being implemented.

This landmark legislation outlawed discrimination and segregation in employment, voter registration requirements, public facilities, and schools. It was initially proposed by President Kennedy in mid-1963 but blocked in the Senate by filibustering. After Kennedy’s assassination, President Johnson fought for its passage, overcoming another long filibuster. It finally passed Congress in June 1964, and he signed it into law on July 2. In 1999, a Gallup poll asked Americans to order 18 events of the 20th century according to their importance, and the respondents ranked the Civil Rights Act fifth.

One of several civil rights groups active in the 1960s, CORE was founded in 1942. Its name describes its mission of creating an equal society for all races. The founders fashioned the organization after the nonviolent demonstrations of Gandhi, who was still actively protesting British rule in India at the time of CORE’s founding. Led by James Farmer, CORE sponsored the Freedom Rides that Lewis took part in during 1961.

These were a series of bus rides from Washington, DC, to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1961 to test the Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (see above) from the year before. Sponsored by CORE, the Freedom Rides were, in fact, a repeat of a similar journey the organization sponsored in 1947 called the Journey of Reconciliation. The purpose of these earlier rides was also to test the enforcement of a Supreme Court decision, Morgan v. Virginia (1946), which, likewise, barred segregation in interstate travel.

Also known as the Mississippi Summer Project, this was a campaign in the summer of 1964 to register African Americans in the state of Mississippi. SNCC was one of the organizers, so Lewis was heavily involved in it. The volunteers were often harassed, threatened, and beaten. Three workers in the campaign disappeared after being arrested, and their bodies were later found buried in a dam. The campaign also ran summer schools and set up libraries.

These were a series of laws passed in southern states beginning in the late 19th century to deny rights to Black citizens. They were wide-ranging, designed to disenfranchise and segregate the Black population. Some examples are establishing segregated schools, theaters, restaurants, and other public facilities, as well as restricting voter registration through illegal literacy tests and by requiring Black registrants to recite, verbatim, random sections of the United States Constitution.

This party was formed during the Freedom Summer of 1964 to try to break the lock of Mississippi’s all-white Democratic Party on delegates to the Democratic National Convention later that summer. An integrated group of delegates was chosen and sent to the convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in August, seeking recognition as a viable part of the Democratic Party. The party, however, led by President Johnson, refused to recognize or seat any of the MFDP delegates, creating a tense situation within the convention. After an attempt at a compromise, negotiations broke down. In the end, neither group was seated: the all-white delegates left the convention early, and the MFDP delegates were barred from the nominating process.

The SNCC was formed in 1960 by participants of the sit-ins at lunch counters in various southern cities. Lewis participated in these sit-ins when he was attending college in Nashville, Tennessee. Rev. James Lawson drafted the SNCC’s statement of principles, which were based on nonviolence. After working to desegregate public facilities, the SNCC moved into registering and organizing voters throughout the South. Lewis was elected chairman in 1963 and served three years until he was replaced by Stokely Carmichael. At that time, many members of the SNCC were moving away from purely peaceful demonstration to more confrontational methods and embracing the concept of Black Power.

This is Lewis’s personal belief in something akin to fate. It began in college, when he adopted the idea that history moved overall in the direction of societal good and justice. In addition, he often had a sense that the Spirit of History was directing his life—that whatever he did was fated to be and that the Spirit guided his convictions and actions in striving toward justice.