Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change

by John Lewis

Ultimately, our strategy worked. After years of waiting, we exposed the injustice of our opposition. The voting rights struggle in Alabama ended with what some legal scholars have called the most effective piece of legislation the U.S. Congress had passed in over fifty years: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Previously, President Lyndon Johnson had advised us it would be impossible to pass another bill on the heels of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination in public accommodations illegal. But because of the people of Selma, Alabama, and the thousands who supported them, because of the people who demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt the pressing need for justice, Johnson was able to send a voting rights bill to the floor of the House. When he introduced the bill, he said these unforgettable words, which I often repeat in my speeches today: “At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.” The people of Selma wrote that act with their marching feet. It was their determination to wait without ceasing that dramatically altered American history. The Voting Rights Act outlawed literacy tests and grandfather clauses, but it also provided for periodic reauthorization to curtail present-day efforts to limit free and fair access to the ballot box. It allowed...