Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change

by John Lewis

I was born on a farm in rural Alabama into a family of sharecroppers, who had been working the cotton, corn, and peanut fields of Alabama for generations. Sharecropping took many forms in different states, but mainly it was a system designed to make us fail. Our work was undervalued, our debt inflated, making it almost impossible to get ahead. We were never paid a living wage, so we had to carry punishing debt to buy the necessary tools and supplies we needed in order to farm. To me, it was a vicious cycle I plainly perceived, even as a young boy, was intended to keep us in poverty. But living on that farm, enveloped by the contrasting purity and innocence of nature, often sequestered from a world that seemed tragically unjust and unfair, I searched inside myself and developed an ability to hear my inner voice speak. As a young boy, I joined the church, because I felt a calling to the ministry at an early age. I knew I wanted to preach, and my first sermon was to the chickens in the barnyard. I loved those gangly, clucking, cooing creatures. To me they seemed so defenseless and so naive. No one ever expected much of them. They were the least respected members of the barnyard. No one tried to distinguish them from one another. They didn’t even have names. They were voiceless, anonymous, invisible, and ultimately slaughtered. Perhaps I identified with their jeopardy, but somehow it became my mission as a young boy to offer them dignity and love. I would preach to them to for...