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John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community
For six decades John Robert Lewis was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into "good trouble."
In this biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."
Both in the streets and in Congress, Lewis promoted a philosophy of nonviolence to bring about change. He helped the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders plan the 1963 March on Washington, where he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial. He was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and he advocated for racial and economic justice, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights, and national health care.
Arsenault recounts Lewis's lifetime of work toward one overarching realizing the "beloved community," an ideal society based in equity and inclusion. Lewis never wavered in this pursuit, and even in death his influence endures, inspiring resistance in the fight for social justice.
In this biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."
Both in the streets and in Congress, Lewis promoted a philosophy of nonviolence to bring about change. He helped the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders plan the 1963 March on Washington, where he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial. He was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and he advocated for racial and economic justice, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights, and national health care.
Arsenault recounts Lewis's lifetime of work toward one overarching realizing the "beloved community," an ideal society based in equity and inclusion. Lewis never wavered in this pursuit, and even in death his influence endures, inspiring resistance in the fight for social justice.
588 pages, Hardcover
Published January 16, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 2, 2024
I learned so much from this book, but it's not well organized, so it's a slog.
Full review:
"Hands that picked cotton, now can pick our elected officials." (From a poster made for a get out the vote drive spearheaded by John Lewis.) (11:13:00)
Several of Lewis's friends urged him to run for mayor, but Lewis had no interest in being the chief executive officer of a city. "I prefer to be a legislator," he explained. (11:45:34)
John Lewis was an important man, and the legacy he left behind includes a fascinating personal history that, when studied, lifts the veil on institutional racism going all the way up to the office of the President. I would recommend reading this book because it is so revealing of John Lewis's life and work.
Unfortunately, while I consider it an important book, even necessary reading, I don't consider it a pleasurable read. There is little organization to make such an enormous amount of emotionally compelling information more consumable. I think it was a mistake to tell Lewis's story in a loose chronology, making drudging work of consuming an otherwise interesting story.
That being said, I think readers will find this a fascinating story that is worth the challenges presented by both length and form. I recommend this one to fans of journalistic nonfiction, biographies, civil rights activism, thick books, and social justice.
"...[With] your great education, you must find a way to get in the way. To get in trouble, good trouble. Necessary trouble." (16:06:39)
Three (or more) things I loved:
1. John Lewis is a person and subject worth studying. He's had a huge impact on federal policy, as a congressman, and improved the lives of Black Americans in immeasurable ways. I love the huge amount of information this book transmits about Lewis's career and personal life. He was a fascinating man.
Three (or less) things I didn't love:
This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.
1. John Lewis was an important figure, and I love learning more about him. But the book is slow and dry.
2. The organization of the book is practically nonexistent. This book transmits an enormous amount of information but just sort of shovels it at the audience. The lack of organization creates repetition, overwhelming chapters, and pacing issues. Not only that, without organization, the author loses the opportunity to indicate to the readers what he thinks are the most salient points. I have long thought that chronogical organization is the worst way to structure a nonfiction book.
Rating: 🗳🗳🗳🗳 /5 ballot boxes
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: Sep 30 '24
Format: Digital arc, NetGalley; Audiobook, Libby
Read this book if you like:
👤 biographies
🗞 long form journalism
🗯 activism
🤝 civil rights and human rights
🟰 social justice
Thank you to the author Raymond Arsenault, publishers Yale University Press, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of JOHN LEWIS: IN SEARCH OF THE BELOVED COMMUNITY. I found an audiobook copy on Libby. Read by Jaime Lincoln Smith. All views are mine.
Full review:
"Hands that picked cotton, now can pick our elected officials." (From a poster made for a get out the vote drive spearheaded by John Lewis.) (11:13:00)
Several of Lewis's friends urged him to run for mayor, but Lewis had no interest in being the chief executive officer of a city. "I prefer to be a legislator," he explained. (11:45:34)
John Lewis was an important man, and the legacy he left behind includes a fascinating personal history that, when studied, lifts the veil on institutional racism going all the way up to the office of the President. I would recommend reading this book because it is so revealing of John Lewis's life and work.
Unfortunately, while I consider it an important book, even necessary reading, I don't consider it a pleasurable read. There is little organization to make such an enormous amount of emotionally compelling information more consumable. I think it was a mistake to tell Lewis's story in a loose chronology, making drudging work of consuming an otherwise interesting story.
That being said, I think readers will find this a fascinating story that is worth the challenges presented by both length and form. I recommend this one to fans of journalistic nonfiction, biographies, civil rights activism, thick books, and social justice.
"...[With] your great education, you must find a way to get in the way. To get in trouble, good trouble. Necessary trouble." (16:06:39)
Three (or more) things I loved:
1. John Lewis is a person and subject worth studying. He's had a huge impact on federal policy, as a congressman, and improved the lives of Black Americans in immeasurable ways. I love the huge amount of information this book transmits about Lewis's career and personal life. He was a fascinating man.
Three (or less) things I didn't love:
This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.
1. John Lewis was an important figure, and I love learning more about him. But the book is slow and dry.
2. The organization of the book is practically nonexistent. This book transmits an enormous amount of information but just sort of shovels it at the audience. The lack of organization creates repetition, overwhelming chapters, and pacing issues. Not only that, without organization, the author loses the opportunity to indicate to the readers what he thinks are the most salient points. I have long thought that chronogical organization is the worst way to structure a nonfiction book.
Rating: 🗳🗳🗳🗳 /5 ballot boxes
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: Sep 30 '24
Format: Digital arc, NetGalley; Audiobook, Libby
Read this book if you like:
👤 biographies
🗞 long form journalism
🗯 activism
🤝 civil rights and human rights
🟰 social justice
Thank you to the author Raymond Arsenault, publishers Yale University Press, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of JOHN LEWIS: IN SEARCH OF THE BELOVED COMMUNITY. I found an audiobook copy on Libby. Read by Jaime Lincoln Smith. All views are mine.
August 21, 2024
If you ever wanted to know what type of man John Lewis was, all you have to do is ask someone from the other side of the political aisle what their opinion is of him. In this case I would point to someone who disagreed with Lewis about every conceivable issue – former North Carolina Congressman and Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who would respond to questions about the Georgia Congressman and Civil Rights leader – “he was my friend,” and Lewis would reciprocate those feelings. You might ask how two such disparate characters could call themselves friends – all you have to do is read Raymond Arsenault’s new biography, JOHN LEWIS: IN SEARCH OF THE BELOVED COMMUNITY to understand the unshakable integrity and believer in man’s humanity which made up the core of the former activist and progressive legislator.
Lewis believed in forgiveness and compassion as part of achieving what referred to as “the beloved community” where racial hatred would be eradicated, and we would all live in a world of fairness and equality as he was determined to replace the horrors of the past and present with his ideals. Arsenault’s biography cannot be described as a hagiography as he delves into Lewis’ life, decisions and actions carefully offering a great deal of praise, but the author does not shy away from his subject’s mistakes and faulty decisions. At a time when racial “dog whistles” dominate a significant element of the political class it is unsettling to listen to a presidential candidate demean his opponent’s racial heritage linking it to her intelligence and background. This has led to racially motivated violent rhetoric that permeates the news making it a useful exercise exploring the life of a civil rights leader who fought valiantly against these elements in our society.
Arsenault’s monograph begins by exploring Lewis’ rural upbringing in Pike County, Alabama. Sharecropping was the main source of income in a white dominated economic system designed to keep tenant farmers under the thumb of their landlords. Any progress his parents might have achieved was never enough to escape poverty. For Lewis, growing up in this racial and economic system formed a social and intellectual laboratory as he hated working in the cotton fields and soon became intoxicated with education where the inequality of white and black opportunities was glaring. The structure of Jim Crow society dominated. Lewis had high hopes with the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas but the “massive resistance” the southern white supremacists responded with disabused Lewis that the decision would ameliorate the situation blacks found themselves locked into.
The development of Lewis’ approach to achieving change is explored in detail and we learn the impact of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Lewis at an early age. Arsenault spends a great deal of time delving into the King-Lewis relationship from the mid-1950s civil rights struggles through King’s assassination in April 1968. The development of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which Lewis would come to lead, and King’s Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) is important as it shows the dichotomy that existed in the Civil Rights movement particularly as they split from each other in the early 1960s as Black nationalists like Stokley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown advocated violence against white supremacists took over SNCC.
No matter what aspect of Lewis’ career Arsenault discusses he presents a balanced account offering intimate details whether delving into Lewis remarkable rise within the Civil Rights movements from the late 1950s to 1970; his exceptional organizational skills, the schism that developed and seemed to dominate the movement, his four years on the Atlanta City Council through his congressional career. In recounting Lewis’ decision-making, he relates how each judgement was reached and how it affected his social gospel of the beloved community ideology.
Make no mistake the book is more than an intellectual approach to Lewis’ role in the Civil Rights movement. Arsenault seems to cover all the major aspects of the Civil Rights movement from sit ins, stand ins to boycotts challenging the White supremacist governors, sheriffs and other officials in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. Places like Selma, Jackson, Montgomery, Memphis come to dominate the narrative as does the impact of peaceful and violent events on Lewis’ belief system and planning.
For Lewis it was a battle to maintain his belief in nonviolent protest as a tool to uplift his community. At times he would become frustrated after he was physically beaten or arrested, but he would always seem to veer away from anything which would contradict his core ideas, even when close friends and other leaders moved away from a total non-violent approach. He grew angry when the younger generation turned to black power and confrontation, but he always remained loyal to his core principles.
Arsenault’s portrayal does reveal a confrontational and antagonistic strain in Lewis’ personality on rare occasions. One that comes to mind is the nastiness of his Georgia congressional campaign against his friend Julian Bond and fellow activist which cost both men a deep friendship when Lewis was victorious.
Perhaps Arsenault’s most interesting chapters include Lewis’ evaluation of the Kennedy brothers who came late to the game of protecting civil rights workers. At the outset, Lewis had great hopes for John F. Kennedy, however he would be disappointed as the politics of Southern Democrats got in the way. With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court would undermine in 2013, Lewis felt more optimistic, particularly with the metamorphosis of Robert Kennedy, especially after Dr. King was assassinated. There are chapters dealing with the Freedom Riders, important historical figures like Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, James Lawson, Andrew Young, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, along with the Bull Conners, Sheriff Clark, Governors John Patterson and Lester Maddox among many that lend a sense of what it was like to deal with and live through such a tumultuous period in American history.
In the last third of the book, Arsenault describes the Republican resurgence under Gingrich, Reagan and the Bushes which made it difficult for Lewis to navigate the House of Representatives as any liberal agenda was dead on arrival on the House floor. At times he grew upset for the lack of progress that resulted in few if any legislative victories. He had high hopes for the election of Barack Obama, but it was not to be due to Republican obstructionism and in many cases outright racism. The arrival of Donald Trump took his frustration to new levels as events in Charlottesville, Va, a Muslim ban, hideous commentary concerning immigrants, and the actions of Mitch McConnell in the Senate made the achievement of a “beloved community” impossible. Before his death, Lewis would witness a Republican party taking America backwards trying successfully in many cases to undo fifty years of progress made under Democratic leadership – something against which he had repeatedly warned. What separated Lewis from most of his Congressional colleagues was his historical perspective. He could not accept the racism of the Trump administration which returned him to the dark days of the 1960s culminating in the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
In light of Donald Trump’s racial attacks against Kamala Harris, Lewis’ life story seems apropos in light of where we are as a society and how far, or perhaps not as far we have come after the Civil Rights movement. If there is one area that Arsenault could have explored more was learning about the people who knew Lewis the longest and what these relationships actually meant to him. However, Arsenault’s book is well written, researched based on documents and interviews, and has produced a thoughtful and measured account of Lewis’ life and work which continued even as he contracted pancreatic cancer and worked until ten days before his death in 2020 as he visited Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC.
Lewis believed in forgiveness and compassion as part of achieving what referred to as “the beloved community” where racial hatred would be eradicated, and we would all live in a world of fairness and equality as he was determined to replace the horrors of the past and present with his ideals. Arsenault’s biography cannot be described as a hagiography as he delves into Lewis’ life, decisions and actions carefully offering a great deal of praise, but the author does not shy away from his subject’s mistakes and faulty decisions. At a time when racial “dog whistles” dominate a significant element of the political class it is unsettling to listen to a presidential candidate demean his opponent’s racial heritage linking it to her intelligence and background. This has led to racially motivated violent rhetoric that permeates the news making it a useful exercise exploring the life of a civil rights leader who fought valiantly against these elements in our society.
Arsenault’s monograph begins by exploring Lewis’ rural upbringing in Pike County, Alabama. Sharecropping was the main source of income in a white dominated economic system designed to keep tenant farmers under the thumb of their landlords. Any progress his parents might have achieved was never enough to escape poverty. For Lewis, growing up in this racial and economic system formed a social and intellectual laboratory as he hated working in the cotton fields and soon became intoxicated with education where the inequality of white and black opportunities was glaring. The structure of Jim Crow society dominated. Lewis had high hopes with the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas but the “massive resistance” the southern white supremacists responded with disabused Lewis that the decision would ameliorate the situation blacks found themselves locked into.
The development of Lewis’ approach to achieving change is explored in detail and we learn the impact of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Lewis at an early age. Arsenault spends a great deal of time delving into the King-Lewis relationship from the mid-1950s civil rights struggles through King’s assassination in April 1968. The development of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which Lewis would come to lead, and King’s Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) is important as it shows the dichotomy that existed in the Civil Rights movement particularly as they split from each other in the early 1960s as Black nationalists like Stokley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown advocated violence against white supremacists took over SNCC.
No matter what aspect of Lewis’ career Arsenault discusses he presents a balanced account offering intimate details whether delving into Lewis remarkable rise within the Civil Rights movements from the late 1950s to 1970; his exceptional organizational skills, the schism that developed and seemed to dominate the movement, his four years on the Atlanta City Council through his congressional career. In recounting Lewis’ decision-making, he relates how each judgement was reached and how it affected his social gospel of the beloved community ideology.
Make no mistake the book is more than an intellectual approach to Lewis’ role in the Civil Rights movement. Arsenault seems to cover all the major aspects of the Civil Rights movement from sit ins, stand ins to boycotts challenging the White supremacist governors, sheriffs and other officials in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. Places like Selma, Jackson, Montgomery, Memphis come to dominate the narrative as does the impact of peaceful and violent events on Lewis’ belief system and planning.
For Lewis it was a battle to maintain his belief in nonviolent protest as a tool to uplift his community. At times he would become frustrated after he was physically beaten or arrested, but he would always seem to veer away from anything which would contradict his core ideas, even when close friends and other leaders moved away from a total non-violent approach. He grew angry when the younger generation turned to black power and confrontation, but he always remained loyal to his core principles.
Arsenault’s portrayal does reveal a confrontational and antagonistic strain in Lewis’ personality on rare occasions. One that comes to mind is the nastiness of his Georgia congressional campaign against his friend Julian Bond and fellow activist which cost both men a deep friendship when Lewis was victorious.
Perhaps Arsenault’s most interesting chapters include Lewis’ evaluation of the Kennedy brothers who came late to the game of protecting civil rights workers. At the outset, Lewis had great hopes for John F. Kennedy, however he would be disappointed as the politics of Southern Democrats got in the way. With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court would undermine in 2013, Lewis felt more optimistic, particularly with the metamorphosis of Robert Kennedy, especially after Dr. King was assassinated. There are chapters dealing with the Freedom Riders, important historical figures like Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, James Lawson, Andrew Young, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, along with the Bull Conners, Sheriff Clark, Governors John Patterson and Lester Maddox among many that lend a sense of what it was like to deal with and live through such a tumultuous period in American history.
In the last third of the book, Arsenault describes the Republican resurgence under Gingrich, Reagan and the Bushes which made it difficult for Lewis to navigate the House of Representatives as any liberal agenda was dead on arrival on the House floor. At times he grew upset for the lack of progress that resulted in few if any legislative victories. He had high hopes for the election of Barack Obama, but it was not to be due to Republican obstructionism and in many cases outright racism. The arrival of Donald Trump took his frustration to new levels as events in Charlottesville, Va, a Muslim ban, hideous commentary concerning immigrants, and the actions of Mitch McConnell in the Senate made the achievement of a “beloved community” impossible. Before his death, Lewis would witness a Republican party taking America backwards trying successfully in many cases to undo fifty years of progress made under Democratic leadership – something against which he had repeatedly warned. What separated Lewis from most of his Congressional colleagues was his historical perspective. He could not accept the racism of the Trump administration which returned him to the dark days of the 1960s culminating in the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
In light of Donald Trump’s racial attacks against Kamala Harris, Lewis’ life story seems apropos in light of where we are as a society and how far, or perhaps not as far we have come after the Civil Rights movement. If there is one area that Arsenault could have explored more was learning about the people who knew Lewis the longest and what these relationships actually meant to him. However, Arsenault’s book is well written, researched based on documents and interviews, and has produced a thoughtful and measured account of Lewis’ life and work which continued even as he contracted pancreatic cancer and worked until ten days before his death in 2020 as he visited Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC.
January 8, 2024
A writer of many fantastic biographies Arsenault did not disappoint in this poignant life of renowned civil rights leader John Lewis. I found it to be quite academic in nature and I loved it so much. So many lessons on life, liberty and the pursuit and struggles for those attempting to achieve the American dream while in the face of the American struggle.
June 10, 2024
John Lewis is one of the most remarkable men of our time and this biography reflects that. Lewis is well known for his personal courage; he continued with the Freedom Rides after being beaten knowing that he would be beaten again, he was seriously injured on Bloody Sunday but that did not stop him from helping lead the march across the Pettis Bridge a second time.
Yet he never lost his optimism, though this book shows that his optimism was challenged the most by Donald Trump's election. The book also shows Lewis's capacity for love and forgiveness. The preface introduces that by describing Lewis's first beating early in the Freedom Rides, in Rock Hill, South Carolina by members of the KKK. Lewis was punched and kicked, suffering bruised ribs and cuts around his eyes and mouth and a deep gash on the back of his head. But years later when one of the Klansmen called him to apologize, Lewis not only forgave him but arranged to meet him to share the forgiveness in person and in public.
The biography describes Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, born into a poor but strong family where he started taking care of chickens at age 5 and picking cotton just a short time later. The underfunded segregated schools with outdated hand me down books from white schools were an early introduction to racism, reenforced by what he saw in trips into town. This upbringing puts into context both the reservations of many southern Blacks, including his own family, about the civil rights movement and later differences with many middle class northern Blacks in the beginning of the civil rights movement.
The biography includes tidbits showing Lewis's character; is loyalty to Dr King contrasted with the irreverence or disdain by many within SNCC, how Lewis was forced to tone down the militancy in his
March on Washington speech, agreeing only when he saw that Philip Randolph felt that Lewis's speech was threatening Randolph's lifelong dream of the March, but then being criticized by fellow SNCC members for even participating in the March.
The famous congressional campaign against Julian Bond is also described in detail. I knew that Lewis and Bond were friends before the campaign but not the extent of the friendship; it was Bond who introduced him to his wife, the two couples had many double dates. The closeness may explain the increasing rancor of the campaign, the author's lead up to the final debate lets the reader decide about the merits of Lewis challenging Bond to an immediate drug test during the debate. One of the very few criticisms I have is that the book does not discuss whether Lewis and Bond ever truly reconciled after that. I also wish that there was a bit more of the personal Lewis in the book, for example his wife and son sometimes appear to after thoughts.
The books ends strong just as Lewis's life ended strong. In contrast to many of his fellow civil rights leaders, Lewis remained true to his progressive values, and continued to work hard for them. But even more important, he continued to lead by example, showing courage, love, forgiveness and understanding. And this book shows that
Yet he never lost his optimism, though this book shows that his optimism was challenged the most by Donald Trump's election. The book also shows Lewis's capacity for love and forgiveness. The preface introduces that by describing Lewis's first beating early in the Freedom Rides, in Rock Hill, South Carolina by members of the KKK. Lewis was punched and kicked, suffering bruised ribs and cuts around his eyes and mouth and a deep gash on the back of his head. But years later when one of the Klansmen called him to apologize, Lewis not only forgave him but arranged to meet him to share the forgiveness in person and in public.
The biography describes Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, born into a poor but strong family where he started taking care of chickens at age 5 and picking cotton just a short time later. The underfunded segregated schools with outdated hand me down books from white schools were an early introduction to racism, reenforced by what he saw in trips into town. This upbringing puts into context both the reservations of many southern Blacks, including his own family, about the civil rights movement and later differences with many middle class northern Blacks in the beginning of the civil rights movement.
The biography includes tidbits showing Lewis's character; is loyalty to Dr King contrasted with the irreverence or disdain by many within SNCC, how Lewis was forced to tone down the militancy in his
March on Washington speech, agreeing only when he saw that Philip Randolph felt that Lewis's speech was threatening Randolph's lifelong dream of the March, but then being criticized by fellow SNCC members for even participating in the March.
The famous congressional campaign against Julian Bond is also described in detail. I knew that Lewis and Bond were friends before the campaign but not the extent of the friendship; it was Bond who introduced him to his wife, the two couples had many double dates. The closeness may explain the increasing rancor of the campaign, the author's lead up to the final debate lets the reader decide about the merits of Lewis challenging Bond to an immediate drug test during the debate. One of the very few criticisms I have is that the book does not discuss whether Lewis and Bond ever truly reconciled after that. I also wish that there was a bit more of the personal Lewis in the book, for example his wife and son sometimes appear to after thoughts.
The books ends strong just as Lewis's life ended strong. In contrast to many of his fellow civil rights leaders, Lewis remained true to his progressive values, and continued to work hard for them. But even more important, he continued to lead by example, showing courage, love, forgiveness and understanding. And this book shows that
February 10, 2024
I was thrilled to see the publication of an extensive biography of John Lewis, and there are some wonderful anecdotes preserved in it. It really needed a more careful fact-checking scrub, though, especially in relation to its narration of Congressman Lewis’ career in the House. Lots of sloppy small mistakes that detracted from an otherwise interesting and readable account. (The California Republican on the Ways and Means Committee that Mr. Lewis tangled with on the Health Subcommittee was Bill Thomas, not Thompson. When Democrats regained control of the House, the author says they went on to assume control of congressional committee as chairs and “senior ranking members,” which is bizarre—ranking members are of the minority party, and there’s not even a hierarchy of ranking members, senior versus junior. The full name of the Affordable Care act is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, not the Patient Protective and Affordable Care Act, etc. There was a strange claim that Mr. Lewis’ congressional staff was “by far the youngest” staff in Congress, which is a) impossible to verify without tracking the ages of ~9000 House personal office staffers, which would be impossible without review of their birth records, and b) from my own experience working with his wonderful staff in the House, just not the case—he had plenty of longstanding staff. I don’t know why the author would make such an odd and unverifiable claim, especially considering that the age range of his staff was well within the normal range of House staff, and also ultimately just unimportant to the point. Also, this wasn’t a fact-checking issue, but I found it really strange and off-putting the way the biography’s author centered himself in a discussion of the resurgence of interest in Freedom Riders, with an extensive discussion of a book he wrote. I’ve never read a biography where the author interrupted the story of the subject’s life to plug his previous book before, and it was just weird.)
March 30, 2025
“So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”
Though no confirmation was needed, Arsenault’s writing once again shows what an incredible man John Lewis was. The true embodiment of moral integrity and compassion, Lewis served tirelessly with the hope of making our country better for all Americans, even those who didn’t believe he was deserving of equality.
Though no confirmation was needed, Arsenault’s writing once again shows what an incredible man John Lewis was. The true embodiment of moral integrity and compassion, Lewis served tirelessly with the hope of making our country better for all Americans, even those who didn’t believe he was deserving of equality.
February 8, 2024
I love John Lewis and his autobiography, Walking with the Wind. It is one of my favorite books. This new book is a good follow up to that book. It focuses on Lewis’ public life and fills in a lot of the gaps in the years since his 1998 memoir was published.
May 9, 2024
John Lewis is one of the Greatest Americans of all time.
May 9, 2024
A well written and engaging biography of a wonderful human being that this world was so fortunate to have for eighty years!
December 19, 2024
John Lewis may have been the finest American who ever lived.
June 8, 2025
John Lewis is a great American hero and an amazing role model to all who believe in the fight for truth and justice. And while I enjoyed learning more about his life in this biography, at times it got a bit tedious and bogged down with details. But others may love that. Overall, any book about Lewis is worth the read!
December 11, 2024
What an amazing man. This is a really niceley done book.
February 18, 2024
An amazing life, an amazing journey!
Even though I didn't agree with everything Congressman John Lewis did, I was able to see his thought processes. The author drew some conclusions which I believe needed additional research/information. Congressman Lewis stayed true to his beliefs, and that's what makes him a true patriot and statesman.
Even though I didn't agree with everything Congressman John Lewis did, I was able to see his thought processes. The author drew some conclusions which I believe needed additional research/information. Congressman Lewis stayed true to his beliefs, and that's what makes him a true patriot and statesman.
January 27, 2024
I'm very glad that I read this biography of John Lewis. I've long admired this man. I was moved to tears as I read the ending of this book.
August 8, 2024
Page 199 John Lewis
“The right to challenge authority, to raise questions, point up issues, draw attention to needs, demand changes, is at the basis of a truly responsive, representative democracy. People must never give up the right to protest.”
John Lewis’s life trajectory in the last half of the 20th century was extraordinary. He was born in 1940 in an impoverished community called Pike County in Alabama. The household had no electricity or running water.
He was a pacificist from a young age and went to Nashville to study theology, but he became influenced by the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama led by Martin Luther King Jr. King’s adherence to non-violence influenced John Lewis throughout his life.
John Lewis believed in trying to create the “beloved community” of non-violence and ending segregation. He participated in sit-ins in Nashville restaurants that prohibited serving “colored people”. Then he joined the Freedom Rides in 1961 when, along with others, he tried to break the colour barriers on buses travelling through Southern States. Segregation on interstate travel had been prohibited by federal legislation. He participated in a youth group called SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee); a decentralized group formed to protest Jim Crow laws in Southern States.
As a result of all this, John Lewis was beaten on several occasions and arrested forty times during his life. The most infamous incident occurred on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965 on a march to protest the total lack of voting rights for Black people in Alabama. John Lewis and many others were severely beaten by Alabama State troopers.
Page 478 (footnote) John Lewis
“Segregationists are preoccupied with interracial sex. Which is why you see so many shades of brown on this [Selma] march.”
He always retained his non-violent beliefs. He withdrew from SNCC as it was being taken over by more radical factions. Because it was decentralized SNCC was overly susceptible to differing and competing factions. Some of these factions wanted no white people in the organization, others wanted it to be more militant removing non-violence from the SNCC charter.
After John Lewis left SNCC he joined various organizations that sought to empower the poor, more so in the South.
Page 279 John Lewis
“[Since the 1960s] We had made remarkable progress, we had forced the side of segregation and discrimination to retreat on many fronts. But they did not surrender. Far from it. They simply retrenched in different, more subtle ways.”
In 1986 John Lewis was elected as a Congress-person in the state of Georgia. This was during the Reagan era when reactionary forces were gaining momentum and the role of government in progressive legislation was diminishing.
Page 331 John Lewis 1994
“Health care is a basic right of all individuals. It’s not a privilege.”
Page 311 on being elected to Congress in 1986
[John Lewis] set out to remind his colleagues that the government’s “first concern should be the basic needs of its citizens for food, shelter, health care, education, jobs, livable income and the opportunity to realize their full potential as individual people.”
How many elected representatives in Congress and the Senate adhere to this today? Not many.
John Lewis never let go of his wonderful belief in the “beloved community”, an inclusive society where diversity is nourished. But he could see clearly that it was under constant threat. Reactionary forces were attacking progressives on many fronts – removing parts of Lyndon Johnson’s Voting Rights Act of 1965, limiting birth control access, criminalizing abortion, protecting gun rights, religious infringement on government and schools, attacks on the LGBTQ community. John Lewis was alarmed and disheartened by all this – more so after Trump was elected in 2016.
Page 415
For white Americans who felt dispossessed, an almost unimaginable event, the election of a Black President – had unleashed a strain of open racial resentment that previously had been limited to fringe groups.
Page 432 John Lewis, 2018
“The question of who is considered fully human has returned with a vengeance.”
One of the bright sides was the growth of the BLM movement.
This book ends eloquently after the death of John Lewis on July 17, 2020:
Page 450 July 26/2020
As the caisson [containing the body of John Lewis] continued onto the [Edmond Pettus Bridge] … on its way to the capital in Montgomery, Alabama… This time there were no state troopers blocking his path, no clouds of tear gas, and no billy clubs to knock him down and fracture his skull. This time Lewis was free to travel all the way to Montgomery.
“The right to challenge authority, to raise questions, point up issues, draw attention to needs, demand changes, is at the basis of a truly responsive, representative democracy. People must never give up the right to protest.”
John Lewis’s life trajectory in the last half of the 20th century was extraordinary. He was born in 1940 in an impoverished community called Pike County in Alabama. The household had no electricity or running water.
He was a pacificist from a young age and went to Nashville to study theology, but he became influenced by the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama led by Martin Luther King Jr. King’s adherence to non-violence influenced John Lewis throughout his life.
John Lewis believed in trying to create the “beloved community” of non-violence and ending segregation. He participated in sit-ins in Nashville restaurants that prohibited serving “colored people”. Then he joined the Freedom Rides in 1961 when, along with others, he tried to break the colour barriers on buses travelling through Southern States. Segregation on interstate travel had been prohibited by federal legislation. He participated in a youth group called SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee); a decentralized group formed to protest Jim Crow laws in Southern States.
As a result of all this, John Lewis was beaten on several occasions and arrested forty times during his life. The most infamous incident occurred on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965 on a march to protest the total lack of voting rights for Black people in Alabama. John Lewis and many others were severely beaten by Alabama State troopers.
Page 478 (footnote) John Lewis
“Segregationists are preoccupied with interracial sex. Which is why you see so many shades of brown on this [Selma] march.”
He always retained his non-violent beliefs. He withdrew from SNCC as it was being taken over by more radical factions. Because it was decentralized SNCC was overly susceptible to differing and competing factions. Some of these factions wanted no white people in the organization, others wanted it to be more militant removing non-violence from the SNCC charter.
After John Lewis left SNCC he joined various organizations that sought to empower the poor, more so in the South.
Page 279 John Lewis
“[Since the 1960s] We had made remarkable progress, we had forced the side of segregation and discrimination to retreat on many fronts. But they did not surrender. Far from it. They simply retrenched in different, more subtle ways.”
In 1986 John Lewis was elected as a Congress-person in the state of Georgia. This was during the Reagan era when reactionary forces were gaining momentum and the role of government in progressive legislation was diminishing.
Page 331 John Lewis 1994
“Health care is a basic right of all individuals. It’s not a privilege.”
Page 311 on being elected to Congress in 1986
[John Lewis] set out to remind his colleagues that the government’s “first concern should be the basic needs of its citizens for food, shelter, health care, education, jobs, livable income and the opportunity to realize their full potential as individual people.”
How many elected representatives in Congress and the Senate adhere to this today? Not many.
John Lewis never let go of his wonderful belief in the “beloved community”, an inclusive society where diversity is nourished. But he could see clearly that it was under constant threat. Reactionary forces were attacking progressives on many fronts – removing parts of Lyndon Johnson’s Voting Rights Act of 1965, limiting birth control access, criminalizing abortion, protecting gun rights, religious infringement on government and schools, attacks on the LGBTQ community. John Lewis was alarmed and disheartened by all this – more so after Trump was elected in 2016.
Page 415
For white Americans who felt dispossessed, an almost unimaginable event, the election of a Black President – had unleashed a strain of open racial resentment that previously had been limited to fringe groups.
Page 432 John Lewis, 2018
“The question of who is considered fully human has returned with a vengeance.”
One of the bright sides was the growth of the BLM movement.
This book ends eloquently after the death of John Lewis on July 17, 2020:
Page 450 July 26/2020
As the caisson [containing the body of John Lewis] continued onto the [Edmond Pettus Bridge] … on its way to the capital in Montgomery, Alabama… This time there were no state troopers blocking his path, no clouds of tear gas, and no billy clubs to knock him down and fracture his skull. This time Lewis was free to travel all the way to Montgomery.
March 21, 2024
I thought this biography of John Lewis was excellent. I learned much about the man, in all the different aspects of his life. A leading member of the sit-ins in Nashville when he was in college and then being part of the first Freedom Ride bus trip in 1961, he was a quiet person with a strong belief that non-violence would overcome all the hatred that people of color faced in the South during the Jim Crow era. He was elected chairman of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committe) in 1963 and led that group until 1966 when the group tended toward a more militant direction. He was also one of the leading people to try to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, that resulted in such police violence that it became known as Bloody Sunday. Lewis suffered a skull fracture and was hospitalized but he spoke to television reporters before going to the hospital. According to him, he was arrested more than 40 times during the Civil Rights movement. He went on to become a member of the House of Representatives for 33 years. He died in 2020 after battling pancreatic cancer. This book made me aware of the man, the leader, the husband and the politician. His quiet manner and intelligence and love of the country and ALL people living here,should serve as a goal for all of us and especially our policitians. We should all seek to get into "Good Trouble".
February 27, 2024
The Beloved Community, Good Trouble and Non Violence were more than handy catch phrases for the Civil Rights activist John Lewis. What I found of particular value in this biography were the documentation of 1) Lewis’ step away from the Civil Rights Movement’s sole reliance on legal challenges thru the courts, and to the push forward of participatory direct action ( sit ins, marches, Freedom Rides) to achieve change and respect the struggles of ordinary Black workers; and 2) the in -depth behind the scenes disputes within the movement and later within the halls of Congress and the Black Caucus, and the very tough moral choices faced by Lewis. As someone whose family member went South to support voter registration efforts, I thought I knew a fair amount about the Civil Right Movement, I nonetheless was impressed by the detail and voices heard in this biography. The audio book’s narrator Jame Lincoln Smith has a voice that makes the 15 hours extremely easy to listen to.
May 8, 2024
To be honest, I read this John Lewis biography to examine the tipping point of when one of our Civil Rights saintly icons, turned from the laudable path of justice and equality before the law and opportunity, into a racial, Marxist demagogue...And my theory of the tipping point for this in Lewis, and other Civil Rights greats has been confirmed...It was the shift in focus from equality to equity, or equal outcomes...It is impossible to achieve because equal require equal inputs...Equity requires controlling inputs...The US is imbued with strong, cultural tendency toward freedom, but not a strong tendency towards authoritarian governmental power...Equity or equitable outcomes, require massive government expansions of government programming controlling inputs, the existing cultural forces of freedom won't allow equity to be imposed without force...Freedom and equity cannot coexist and the divide we feel today is a direct result of this struggle!
December 3, 2023
I studied a lot of historical figures while in pursuit of my Masters of History. One that has always stood out was John Lewis. Born in rural Alabama, ironically close to where I live now, he experienced a lot of racial tension and hatred during his life.
In John Lewis, Raymond Arsenault writes a powerful biography where we see Lewis overcome many challenges. The author has done some amazing research and this story will immortalize Lewis further. Lewis was so instrumental in making sure the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 passed. He has helped to advocate for racial and economic justice, LBGTQ rights, immigration reform, and national health care.
I enjoyed getting to read more in depth about Lewis. He is a fascinating and important historical figure.
Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read a copy of this book - all thoughts are my own.
In John Lewis, Raymond Arsenault writes a powerful biography where we see Lewis overcome many challenges. The author has done some amazing research and this story will immortalize Lewis further. Lewis was so instrumental in making sure the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 passed. He has helped to advocate for racial and economic justice, LBGTQ rights, immigration reform, and national health care.
I enjoyed getting to read more in depth about Lewis. He is a fascinating and important historical figure.
Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read a copy of this book - all thoughts are my own.
March 11, 2024
I'm embarrassed to admit I had no idea of just how incredible John Lewis was. I knew he was involved with the civil rights movement, but I didn't know to what extent the man dedicated his entire life to the tenets of nonviolent protest in the quest for not only civil, but human rights. Arsenault has written a scholarly, and very readable, biography of the man, who in his late teens was an architect of the Freedom Rides, indeed taking his life into his hands by daring to take a trip on a bus into the deep south. When he was just 25 he nearly died attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, when his group was viciously attacked by the local police.
Lewis was reluctant to take on the mantle of hero, but after reading this book, I cannot think of another more fitting description of the man.
Lewis was reluctant to take on the mantle of hero, but after reading this book, I cannot think of another more fitting description of the man.
December 28, 2024
This biography is a deeply powerful story
told about John Lewis. It is filled with first-hand accounts since the author was privileged to know Lewis, as well as packed with meticulously researched information. I found myself reading and setting the book aside to absorb and process, yet eager to pick the book back up again.
The author includes a quote at the beginning where Lewis refers to himself as a “tugboat, not a showboat”. That quote hit me with force because it applied to Lewis so well. He did not seem to be a showy, glamorous person. He had dogged determination that shone from him, and the vignettes and information revealed in the book confirm that. I admired this man, and I am glad that this biography does him justice. Read it. The book is not a quick skim of a story, so take your time to savor it, to appreciate the book and the man.
told about John Lewis. It is filled with first-hand accounts since the author was privileged to know Lewis, as well as packed with meticulously researched information. I found myself reading and setting the book aside to absorb and process, yet eager to pick the book back up again.
The author includes a quote at the beginning where Lewis refers to himself as a “tugboat, not a showboat”. That quote hit me with force because it applied to Lewis so well. He did not seem to be a showy, glamorous person. He had dogged determination that shone from him, and the vignettes and information revealed in the book confirm that. I admired this man, and I am glad that this biography does him justice. Read it. The book is not a quick skim of a story, so take your time to savor it, to appreciate the book and the man.
April 16, 2024
I would rate this five stars in terms of learning more about John Lewis, especially his remarkable activism and commitment to nonviolence. Kudos to the author for telling this story. However I felt like the author also inserted “commercials” about himself and his book about the Freedom Riders, which occasionally distracted me. There were over 70 pages devoted to this important, but not overarching event in the life of Representative Lewis. I saved some quotes such as when Lewis first visited NYC: “In Harlem I saw boarded-up buildings, metal grates on store windows, a different kind of poverty from the poverty we had in the South—a starker, dismal, urban kind of poverty. I felt a great sense of despair.” This book inspires me to find some more good trouble.
November 28, 2024
This is a magisterial biography of a "magisterial" human being. I had known a lot about Lewis and his life before reading Arsenault's book, but it turns out I did not know the "half of it". What he accomplished by the age of 25 is mind boggling. He faced numerous disappointments, including from people in the organization he founded, SNCC, who eventually voted him out of office because he would not abandon his pursuit of non-violence alongside the elimination of racism. The importance of his friendship with Andy Young and Julian Bond were new to me as well as the opposition to Martin Luther King and the SCLC (which King led) by members of SNCC--opposition which Lewis did not join though he resented King's sometime seizing credit for what SNCC led. Internecine warfare existed among friends too.
Lewis' courage and has absolute refusal to compromise on his values, belief in and persistence in pursuing the "better angels" of our nature are uniquely inspiring to me.
Lewis' courage and has absolute refusal to compromise on his values, belief in and persistence in pursuing the "better angels" of our nature are uniquely inspiring to me.
April 2, 2024
Reading the biography of John Lewis by Raymond Arsenault was a deeply moving experience for me. I didn't grow up in this country so I missed and never understood a good deal of what John Lewis experienced. The history recounted around his life filled in many blanks for me and helped me understand, at least a little bit, how the US got to where it is today, which has always mystified me. I admire Lewis profoundly and am grateful to Mr. Arsenault for telling his story--which is our story--so clearly. May we all have the courage to make "good trouble" for the sake of the wellbeing of all of the peoples of our country.
March 10, 2025
He was in search of the beloved community as part his life’s work, but this progressive and revered icon (a moniker that he actually found uncomfortable in describing himself!) of the civil rights movement is one who sat at the table of this beloved community — standing up to bigotry, racism and against injustice! “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble." His offering was embattled yet necessary! This is an amazing tribute to Mr. Lewis and his contribution to history!!
July 25, 2025
"I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring. When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 2lst century, let them say it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide."—John Lewis
March 3, 2025
Truly, an extraordinary book about an extraordinary man who gave his life to the cause of freedom, equality and justice. If you're too young to remember the Freedom Riders or the march over the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, or Jim Crow this book will bring enlightenment and hopefully engagement because the fight rages on and on. BLM is the latest call to resistance and, while it has opened many eyes, the cause, the fight is still there. As John Lewis said "Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
March 26, 2024
John Robert Lewis was a towering figure...an activist for six decades, his unshakeable activism as a Freedom Rider and leader of the SNCC, his championing of voting rights, antipoverty initiatives and his decades of service in Congress. ...with all this, there is no single label that will justly describe his life.
June 25, 2024
John Lewis' vision of a beloved community of inclusion, human dignity, peace, and respect is so appealing to me. That Lewis devoted his whole life, and was even willing to lay down his life for the cause of justice, freedom and non-violence, places him in such high regard. I am inspired by his life and devotion to such a worthy cause and stand in awe.
March 14, 2024
The Publisher Says: The first full-length biography of civil rights hero and congressman John Lewis
For six decades John Robert Lewis (1940–2020) was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into “good trouble.”
In this first book-length biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis’s upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism as a Freedom Rider and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the “conscience of Congress.”
Both in the streets and in Congress, Lewis promoted a philosophy of nonviolence to bring about change. He helped the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders plan the 1963 March on Washington, where he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial. Lewis’s activism led to repeated arrests and beatings, most notably when he suffered a skull fracture in Selma, Alabama, during the 1965 police attack later known as Bloody Sunday. He was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in Congress he advocated for racial and economic justice, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights, and national health care.
Arsenault recounts Lewis’s lifetime of work toward one overarching realizing the “beloved community,” an ideal society based in equity and inclusion. Lewis never wavered in this pursuit, and even in death his influence endures, inspiring mobilization and resistance in the fight for social justice.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Almost six hundred pages. That is a lot of reading time. It is also, peculiarly enough, less than I would have liked it to be because the life of Representative Lewis took place in such interesting times, and among such towering figures of US history, that I would gladly have read more.
Most all my readers know I am a committed atheist, and either know or can guess why. It is people like John Lewis, who used their christian beliefs to leave the world a better, more equitable place for as many as he could advocate for, that make me especially bitter about the sleazy rotten souled creeps who embody my idea of christians and christianity. Lewis was such a committed christian that he, the victim of a violent attack by a racist who later regretted his actions and sought forgiveness from Lewis, referred to the man as his brother in a television appearance they made together. This is a prime example of what a friend of Lewis’s called his "moral jujitsu," a means of wrong-footing the hate-spewing opponents who confidently expected him to return fire.
Author Arsenault sites Lewis in his historical milieu with thorough, fully attributed research. He has relied on personal sources who knew him. Thus they, who were there, can give him the real flavor of a Jim Crow rural Alabama upbringing, one filled with the ritual humiliations and deprivations so beloved of our scumbag brethren the white nationalists. While this did radicalize young Lewis, his christian beliefs channeled his radicalism into a serach for justice, fairness, equitability, and all achieved without the rage and hate that marked his opponents. Admirable to me, and to generations of voters who returned him to Congress for much of his adult life.
His skills as a politician were honed in the arena of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which he was instrumental in forming and from whom he broke away after they began calling for "Black Power," which he saw as provocative and counterproductive with its inherent message of conflict. Lewis opposed the simple reductive sloganeering of the Civil Rights Movement in its post-MLK era. This was, after all, one of the folk who thought they would be murdered in public on Bloody Sunday, in a protest on a bridge now named after him.
What that pointed to was a fact that I, no scholar of Representative Lewis’s life and career, had never known or even considered: John Lewis was not uniformly admired among his colleagues because he favored the cause of human rights over narrowly construed civil rights. He was, for example, taken to task for his vocal opposition to the confirmation of the Supreme Court’s first Black justice, Clarence Thomas...and how right he was about that! He was also a QUILTBAG ally in a community that does not, as a rule, support gay rights...at least not publicly. He very much did, and also supported the ongoing Jewish struggle against antisemitism.
John Lewis emerges from this telling of his life’s story as a man of high principles and powerful moral certainty. It did not make him universally loved, in fact made him a figure of hatred for many, but it gave him the grace of convictions not merely held, but lived. I hope you will spend some hours with John Lewis’s spirit by reading Author Arsennault’s wonderful telling of it. There are illustrative images in the text that enrich the older reader’s memory of the times he helped shape. It is a life worth knowing more about lived in times we still feel reverberations of...though not as positive a feedback as I myownself would prefer.
For six decades John Robert Lewis (1940–2020) was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into “good trouble.”
In this first book-length biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis’s upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism as a Freedom Rider and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the “conscience of Congress.”
Both in the streets and in Congress, Lewis promoted a philosophy of nonviolence to bring about change. He helped the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders plan the 1963 March on Washington, where he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial. Lewis’s activism led to repeated arrests and beatings, most notably when he suffered a skull fracture in Selma, Alabama, during the 1965 police attack later known as Bloody Sunday. He was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in Congress he advocated for racial and economic justice, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights, and national health care.
Arsenault recounts Lewis’s lifetime of work toward one overarching realizing the “beloved community,” an ideal society based in equity and inclusion. Lewis never wavered in this pursuit, and even in death his influence endures, inspiring mobilization and resistance in the fight for social justice.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Almost six hundred pages. That is a lot of reading time. It is also, peculiarly enough, less than I would have liked it to be because the life of Representative Lewis took place in such interesting times, and among such towering figures of US history, that I would gladly have read more.
Most all my readers know I am a committed atheist, and either know or can guess why. It is people like John Lewis, who used their christian beliefs to leave the world a better, more equitable place for as many as he could advocate for, that make me especially bitter about the sleazy rotten souled creeps who embody my idea of christians and christianity. Lewis was such a committed christian that he, the victim of a violent attack by a racist who later regretted his actions and sought forgiveness from Lewis, referred to the man as his brother in a television appearance they made together. This is a prime example of what a friend of Lewis’s called his "moral jujitsu," a means of wrong-footing the hate-spewing opponents who confidently expected him to return fire.
Author Arsenault sites Lewis in his historical milieu with thorough, fully attributed research. He has relied on personal sources who knew him. Thus they, who were there, can give him the real flavor of a Jim Crow rural Alabama upbringing, one filled with the ritual humiliations and deprivations so beloved of our scumbag brethren the white nationalists. While this did radicalize young Lewis, his christian beliefs channeled his radicalism into a serach for justice, fairness, equitability, and all achieved without the rage and hate that marked his opponents. Admirable to me, and to generations of voters who returned him to Congress for much of his adult life.
His skills as a politician were honed in the arena of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which he was instrumental in forming and from whom he broke away after they began calling for "Black Power," which he saw as provocative and counterproductive with its inherent message of conflict. Lewis opposed the simple reductive sloganeering of the Civil Rights Movement in its post-MLK era. This was, after all, one of the folk who thought they would be murdered in public on Bloody Sunday, in a protest on a bridge now named after him.
What that pointed to was a fact that I, no scholar of Representative Lewis’s life and career, had never known or even considered: John Lewis was not uniformly admired among his colleagues because he favored the cause of human rights over narrowly construed civil rights. He was, for example, taken to task for his vocal opposition to the confirmation of the Supreme Court’s first Black justice, Clarence Thomas...and how right he was about that! He was also a QUILTBAG ally in a community that does not, as a rule, support gay rights...at least not publicly. He very much did, and also supported the ongoing Jewish struggle against antisemitism.
John Lewis emerges from this telling of his life’s story as a man of high principles and powerful moral certainty. It did not make him universally loved, in fact made him a figure of hatred for many, but it gave him the grace of convictions not merely held, but lived. I hope you will spend some hours with John Lewis’s spirit by reading Author Arsennault’s wonderful telling of it. There are illustrative images in the text that enrich the older reader’s memory of the times he helped shape. It is a life worth knowing more about lived in times we still feel reverberations of...though not as positive a feedback as I myownself would prefer.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews