Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change

by John Lewis

The restless call for change blew constantly through my mind and disturbed my peace as a boy growing up in the cotton fields of Alabama. I was like a little wisp of dust wafting in a sea of adversity, a black boy trying to get the kind of education that would lead to better opportunity crashing against the rock-hard heart of the Jim Crow South. That was a bitter, harsh experience that made me feel as though the world was set against me. I think that is how some people feel today struggling against the worst economic odds we have seen in eighty years, losing their homes, their jobs, and their pensions. They can’t seem to get ahead. The deck seems persistently stacked against them. I understand the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that can surround a people who feel thwarted at every turn. I could not have been farther away from the halls of Congress or the chambers of the Supreme Court as a small boy in Alabama. Back then I could not choose my seat on a bus or sit down at a lunch counter to eat, and blacks certainly didn’t have the access to vote. No provision had been made for me and others like me to communicate the dictates of our conscience to the leadership of a nation. We had to build that road ourselves. We made a way out of no way to free ourselves from oppression and bring an American society one step closer to realizing its pledge: “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing...