Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change

by John Lewis

Gandhi would tell us there is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

it is when we find the courage to act on that calling that we can finally begin to find peace.

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” —NELSON MANDELA

Gandhi would say it is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And Martin Luther King Jr. would say we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will all perish as fools.

“We are all bound by the ties of love…Even as there is cohesive force in blind matter so much must there be in all things animate and the name for that cohesive force among animate beings is Love.” —MOHANDAS GANDHI, YOUNG INDIA, OCTOBER 6, 1921

The notion of an eye for an eye, though biblical, only lowers an individual to the level of his or her attacker.

And there are spiritual consequences for this bitter work that an individual cannot defend against. Young boys and girls develop hardened attitudes. They grieve the violent deaths of friends and family members. Some turn to drugs and alcohol to obscure the nagging of the soul. Darkness cannot overcome darkness, only light can do that.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” —NELSON MANDELA, LONG WALK TO FREEDOM: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NELSON MANDELA

Almost forty-eight years after that now famous Freedom Ride stop in Rock Hill, South Carolina that left Albert Bigelow and me so badly bruised and bloodied, Elwin Wilson, one of our attackers, wanted to come to meet me. Wilson had apologized to other Freedom Riders during ceremonies honoring them in South Carolina and had mentioned his wish to find the men he had beaten up that day in Rock Hill. I welcomed him to Washington and as we sat, Wilson looked deep into my eyes, searching my expression, and said he was the person who had beaten me in Rock Hill in May of 1961. He said, “I am sorry about what I did that day. Will you forgive me?” Without a moment of hesitation, I looked back at him and said, “I accept your apology.” The man who had physically and verbally assaulted me was now seeking my approval. This was a great testament to the power of love to overcome hatred.

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” —MOTHER TERESA

Even in violence, the unity of humanity cannot be broken, and that is why it is more productive to acknowledge the bond from the beginning and move from there. The struggle is simply an elongated path to the abiding conclusion: We are all one people, one family. Wilson has said publicly that he is glad to be able to count me as a friend today, and he has expressly mentioned his gratitude that we did not press charges that day. His life and the life of his family could have been changed forever if South Carolina had actually tried and convicted him. But beyond that, had he been tried, it would have added a layer of justification to the rationalization that always accompanies guilt. If he had been publicly vindicated, which would have been the likely outcome, it would have been more difficult for him to come to the point where he eventually believed an apology was in order, and more difficult for him to feel love.

Forgiveness plays a powerful role here because it paves the way for reconciliation and love. In the movement, we did not seek retaliation or revenge against our attackers, because we recognized that we could not harm them without harming ourselves. We saw them as wayward brothers and sisters who had lost their way. We learned to visualize them as innocent babies. No child is born in hate. All children are born in hope, love, and innocence. It is a troubled world that teaches these vicious values. We saw that our attackers were also victims, victims of a negative indoctrination that taught the false values of superiority and inferiority, the sanction of violence and brutality, and the justification of inhumanity and hate.

The goal of our work in the movement, of all of our activism, and our protest was to come to love. Our desire was not a temporary victory. We did not want to throw loose dirt on a shallow grave. We wanted to push and pull and do all we could to permanently end the injustice of legal segregation and racial discrimination, and we defined those problems in broad terms. That is why there was a strong relationship between the Labor Movement and the Civil Rights Movement, between the struggles of post-Holocaust Jews, Latino farm workers, the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised, and the disabled. We saw all of these struggles as linked to the same root cause, and we wanted to do all we could to defend the dignity of humankind, no matter what form of oppression people were facing.

You are a light. You are the light.

Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don’t be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice.