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

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Overture-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-Appendix

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Nonviolent Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement

The subject of this book, John Lewis, embodied peaceful or nonviolent resistance in the fight against discrimination during the civil rights movement. While this was the dominant approach in the early years of the movement (roughly the 1950s and first half of the 1960s), other voices advocated a different approach that involved more confrontation. Lewis never wavered in his faith in nonviolence, even when it cost him personally, and that is the focus of Meacham’s book.

Lewis’s two biggest influences in this area were Rev. James Lawson and Rev. Martin Luther King. Lawson, while a missionary in India, studied the tactics of Gandhi and applied them to the struggle for civil rights at home in America, where he fused principles of nonviolent resistance with the doctrine of Christian love. As Lawson put it in the SNCC statement of principles, “By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence, nonviolence nurtures the atmosphere in which reconciliation and peace become actual possibilities” (62). King first put the nonviolent strategy into action during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 to protest segregation on that city’s public buses.

Lewis learned about nonviolent resistance by attending Lawson’s weekly workshops and visiting the Highlander Folk School. Later, Lewis practiced nonviolent resistance when, as a college student in Nashville, he joined sit-ins at lunch counters. He later recalled that his first arrest at a peaceful demonstration felt liberating, as he reveled in “the purity and utter certainty of the nonviolent path” (71). Over time, the incessant and brutal violence inflicted on the workers of the movement took its toll, causing many to turn away from the strategy of nonviolence. They felt that merely having the moral high ground wasn’t working and that at some point they would have to defend themselves. Others, like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, took a stronger stance, asserting Black Power as a force to reckon with. As a result of this shift, Lewis—who stayed true to the nonviolent path—lost his leadership position with the SNCC in 1966.

Racism in the United States

This theme underlies everything in the book. Without racism and its manifestations, Lewis’s life work would have been unnecessary. Along with his colleagues, his struggle for justice was to combat racism in the form of segregation and discrimination against Black Americans. Growing up in Alabama, Lewis lived these conditions, and racism was all around him—in the past and present. His great-grandfather, whom he knew, was born a slave one year before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Lewis attended a segregated, inferior school, riding there on dilapidated buses that were cast-offs from the white school system. When he visited the nearby town of Troy as a child, he was met with all kinds of rules and regulations stipulating what Black citizens could and could not do—and where they were allowed to go.

Meacham goes further, reporting on atrocities that took place near Lewis’s hometown, which give a glimpse into the kinds of things Black Americans were subjected to. Just one example is the case of Recy Taylor, a wife and mother who was walking home from church services when she was set upon by a group of white men. They kidnapped and gang-raped her before letting her go. The perpetrators were well known, but two different grand juries refused to indict them, and they went free (22).

When Lewis and other civil rights workers started to demonstrate for equal rights and desegregation, they did so peaceably and nonviolently, never responding to threats and attacks, verbal or physical. These televised clashes between peaceful Black students and violent white citizens and authorities shocked much of the nation. Eventually, the repeated brutality helped garner support for federal legislation to protect the rights of African Americans as well as all other citizens. The actions of Lewis and so many others who stood up to entrenched racism—peacefully but bravely—helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Laws alone do not rid society of racism, but the civil rights workers showed that when more people confront it, they begin to change society.

Creating the Beloved Community

This concept underlaid Lewis’s fight against racism and the use of peaceful means to defeat it. The ultimate goal was to create the Beloved Community. The term, coined by philosopher Josiah Royce, has been described as the Kingdom of God on earth, and Lewis once explained it as follows:

‘Beloved’ meaning not hateful, not violent, not uncaring, not unkind, and ‘Community’ meaning not separated, not polarized, not locked in struggle; the Beloved Community is an all-inclusive world society based on simple justice, the values, the dignity, and the worth of every human being, and that is the Kingdom of God (234).

Lewis was introduced to the concept by his two mentors, Rev. James Lawson and Rev. Martin Luther King, who popularized it. It goes beyond the goal of many to create “a more perfect Union,” as the Preamble to the Constitution puts it, because the Beloved Community is not just political. Instead, the aspect of Christian love and acceptance would bind together all the people of the world in a harmonious, perfect society. This society would be free of exploitation and would respect the dignity of every individual.

The Beloved Community also has an element that parallels the story of Jesus Christ in that its attainment comes through the travails and suffering that one experiences in striving for it. This may explain why Lewis remained true to the principle of nonviolence through all the brutal beatings and deaths that took place during the struggle for civil rights. Redemption through trial and tribulation is what leads to the Beloved Community.