John Lewis (born 1940)

John Kennedy probably did not know, nor did most Americans at the time, that this march was not Dr. King's ideathe 1964 March on Washington, which, according to Lewis, many perceive to have been planned by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. It originated with a man named A. Philip Randolphorganizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first union of predominately black workers to be granted a charter by the American Federation of Labor, an elder statesman of the movement who, in 1925, had founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the most effective civil rights and labor organizations of its time. With his distinguished bearing and his rich bass voice, Randolph was, at seventy-four, still a commanding presence. People respected him for both his appearance and his achievements.
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From the first mention of this march, a good number of SNCCStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee people wanted nothing to do with it. Their feeling was that this would be a lame event, organized by the cautious, conservative traditional power structure of black America, in compliancethe process of conforming or yielding to a desire or set of rules with and most likely under the control of the federal government. At SNCC we had little patience with meetings and talk and inflated, empty gestures. That had been the standard procedure for the previous one hundred years. We were about something different--aggressive action. More than any of the other groups invited to meet with Kennedy, we were the one with our people out on the front lines being beaten and jailed and killed all across the South with little response or protection from the federal government. Why should we sit down and talk with that government about a nice, orderly march in D.C.?

The feeling among most of the rank and file of SNCC was that if we did take part in this march, we should do it our way, which would be to turn this demonstration into a protest rather than a plea. Stage sit-ins all across Washington. Tie up traffic. Have "lie-ins" on local airport runways. Invade the offices of southern congressmen and senators. Camp on the White House lawn. Cause mass arrests. Paralyze the city.

These were ideas that came up as we met that week to decide whether we should attend this meeting. In the end there was simply not a lot of enthusiasm about this trip to Washington. Someone should go, we decided, simply so we would have a presence. FormanJames Forman, a prominent leader of SNCC and the civil rights movement, in his position of our executive secretary, would have been the natural choice, but he deferred to me. He just didn't think it was going to be that big a deal.

As for me, I thought the march was a good idea. I felt that any form of action, any form of drama of this kind, was helpful and effective. I think that whenever you can get a large group of people together, whether it's to march, or to have a prayer vigil, or to sit in, you should. Whenever people have an opportunity to dramatize their feelings, to point out an issue, to educate others and alert them and open their eyes, I think they should do those things.

That's how I saw this march. I never saw it as something to support a particular political position or a particular piece of legislation or even a particular issue. I saw it as an opportunity to highlight what we were doing and facing with our direct action all throughout the South, a chance yet again to call the nation's attention to the ugliness and violence and suffering. The other leaders might or might not focus on those things, but we could focus on them. We could certainly make our voice heard, the voice of SNCC.

So it was decided that I would be that voice.

One leader who was expressly not invited to that meeting, though he was certainly a force to be reckoned with in the black community, and was becoming more so every day, was Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam, or, as they were better known, the Black Muslims.

I respected Malcolm. I saw him as a very articulate, very forceful spokesperson for what he believed in. but I never accepted his ideas. I didn't--and I don’t--have any sympathy with black nationalism, separatism, the attitude of an eye for an eye or violence of any sort. I can respect a person and understand what he's saying and still not be sympathetic to it. As far as I was concerned, Malcolm was not a civil rights leader.How did Malcolm X's views vary from John Lewis's? Malcolm was not part of the movement. The movement had a goal of an integrated society, an interracial democracy, a Beloved Community. What Malcolm X represented were the seeds of something different, something that would eventually creep into the movement itself and split it apart. He was not about integration, not about interracial community, and he was not nonviolent. To his credit, he preached personal independence and responsibility, self-discipline and self-reliance. But he also urged the black man to fight back in self-defense--"by any means necessary,"What might some potential consequences of this type of self-defense be? as he famously put it. And I just could not accept that.

But there were many that summer of '63 who did--more, it seemed, every day. I could see Malcolm's appeal, especially to young people who had never been exposed to or had any understanding of the discipline of nonviolence--and also to people who had given up on that discipline. There was no question Malcolm X was tapping into a growing and understandable feeling of restlessness and resentment among America's blacks. Earlier that year, when Dr. King delivered a speech in Harlem, a section of the audience jeered him, chanting, "We want Malcolm! We want Malcolm!"

The president, however, did not. Neither did the other black leaders who arrived at the White House that June afternoon--the "Big Six," as we were collectively called by the press.

It was mind-blowing for me to be there. Exactly one week after being elected chairman of SNCC, here I was, at the White House, meeting with John F. Kennedy, meeting Bobby Kennedy, meeting Lyndon Johnson. The President was due to leave for Vienna the next day to meet Khrushchev--their first meeting since the previous October's Cuban Missile Crisisthis text refers to a meeting President Kennedy was about to have with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the first since October 1962, when the United States and the former Soviet Union were on the brink of a nuclear war during a thirteen-day standoff known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.--and he came into the room in somewhat of a rush. He shook hands all around the table, greeting us each with a "Hello." No names. Bobby sat over by a wall, with one of his daughters in his lap. There were other people around, watching over the proceedings and taking notes.

The President got right to the point. He was concerned about all the violence and unrest he was seeing in the South. He was mightily concerned about the success of this civil rights bill, and he didn't see how this march was going to help anything.

The President got right to the point. He was concerned about all the violence and unrest he was seeing in the South. He was mightily concerned about the success of this civil rights bill, and he didn't see how this march was going to help anything.

"We want success in Congress," he told us, "not just a big show at the Capitol."

He said this bill stood a much better chance of passing if black people stayed off the streets.

"The Negroes are already in the streets," answered Randolph, who had been face-to-face with a president before and showed no fear whatsoever. There would be a march, he told Kennedy. The only questions were what form it would take. And those questions, Randolph made clear--politely, respectfully, but firmly--would be answered by us, not the government.

King did not speak until near the end of the two-hour meeting. He held the preeminent role in black America at that point in time, no question. But in that meeting we all deferred to Rudolph, King included. Randolph was the dean. Although he was getting up in age, the man still had so much dignity and pride. He was so impressive, such a wonderful, decent human being, with so much bearing, so much grace. I've said this many times: If he had been born in another time, in another place, or of another race, A. Philip Randolph would have been a prime minister, or a president, or a king.

The talk went back and forth in a generally pleasant way. I listened, taking everything in. it was not my place to talk. Not here. My time--our time--would come later. When Wilkins noted that we would have problems with our own organizations and memberships if we did not march, the President stood up, sighed and said, "Well, we all have our problems. You have your problems. I have my problems."

Then he shook hands all around again, wished us well and turned the meting over to his brother and Vice President Johnson.

Minutes later the meeting broke up.

As soon as I got back to Atlanta, I briefed Forman and the rest of the central committee on what had occurred. This march was going to happen, and we were going to be part of it. Now there was suddenly a lot more interest and desire for involvement, at least on the part of the committee, and certainly on the part of Forman. When word came that there would be a gathering of the march planners on July 2 in New York City, Forman was not about to miss this one. He and I flew up together.

This was my first trip ever to New York City. The one thing I will never forget about that trip was the great sense of anger and hopelessness I felt in Harlem. It was very different from the South, where we were moving and marching and acting with a sense of community and purpose. 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. I passed a crowd of people on a corner, listening to a speaker chant and rave about what they were going to do with "Whitey," and it seemed very sad, very hopeless. The whole situation seemed to lack a sense of direction, a sense of vision.

There was a tremendous need then, and there remains today, for someone to take hold of the urban centers in the North and give them that sense of direction. Despite the setbacks of recent years, there remains in the South an inherentbelonging by nature or habit; intrinsic, innate sense of purpose, of belief, of people pulling together and actually effecting change. Despite all the failures and frustrations of the past three decades, there is still a spirit in the South, a spirit instilled by the civil rights movement that is still felt and remembered today, a spirit that was not and is not felt in the same way in the North. That, I believe, is the huge difference between the legacy of the civil rights movements in the North and the South. All the great battlegrounds of the civil rights movement were in the South. That fact is cherished and remembered by the people there. In the North there seem to be a great many people with little faith, people who have almost given up, people who feel that they have little to hold on to or believe in. they never went through what we went through. They never tasted directly what we tasted. So they simply do not believe.

I saw this for the first time during that July 1963 trip to New York. Our meeting took place at the Roosevelt Hotel, and it provided my first real look at the personality of Roy Wilkins.leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1931 to 1977 I can't say I liked what I saw. He had held himself back when we met with the President, but now, here, among just us, Wilkins was really asserting himself. We met in one of the hotel's private dining rooms, and from the moment Wilkins entered the room he came across to me as some sort of New Yorker who thought he was smarter than the rest of the group. He seemed to assume that because he was the head of the largest organization among us in terms of sheer membership--the NAACP--he was the master and we were nothing but a bunch of upstarts. He clearly assumed that we were naïve--all of us, including Dr. King. He didn't trust us young people in SNCC, and that was not surprising. But he didn't trust Dr. King either. He seemed to feel that King was basically a careless, unsophisticated country preacher, and to envy the power and position Dr. King had attained. He didn't think King deserved it.

What was memorable about the meeting that day, much more than the details of planning the upcoming march, was watching the dynamics among the participants. It was a real exercise in power and positioning and political rivalry.If you were John Lewis, how do you think you would react to watching the power dynamics play out during these meetings?When Wilkins entered the room, about a dozen or so people were there chatting, waiting to take their seats around the large dining room table. Wilkins immediately shook his head and began walking through the room, tapping people on the shoulder, saying who would stay and who had to leave. These were powerful people he was ordering around, and he was not very polite about it. He was particularly nasty to Bayard RustinCivil rights leader who was a co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil rights organization--very hostile. And he was hardly more cordialcourteous, friendly, warm to the others. He didn't suggest that anyone leave the room, he demanded it.

It was amazing to me that he would do that. Even more amazing was the fact that the others obeyed. Fred Shuttlesworth. Ralph Abernathy. Forman. And, yes, Rustin. They all did as Wilkins said. They weren't happy about it, but they left.

When Wilkins was done, only six people remained--the group that had met with the President, the "Big Six."

To be honest, I was surprised from the beginning to see the Urban Leaguea civil rights organization created to help southern African Americans find work after moving to northern cities, led by Whitney Young from 1960 to 1971 represented at all. It was not an activist organization per se. And Whitney Young was certainly not an activist. He was not, in my estimation, movement-oriented at all. He was more a teacher, an administrator, the director of a social agency. The Urban League took care of the social and economic needs of people, doing good work, necessary work, but they were not known for being out in the streets and fighting. Having Whitney Young at that table was like having a college president in a room full of soldiers. But he was very close to Wilkins, so he was there.

It was no coincidence that Wilkins and Young seemed to agree on every issue that came up that day. And it made sense that, in an unspoken language, a coalition developed among King, FarmerJames Farmer, cofounder of CORE and me. We were, after all, the ones who had actually been out there fighting. It was as if the others were coming with an appetite to a meal that had already been prepared, and we were the ones who prepared it. It was the SCLCSouthern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization Martin Luther King Jr. helped found and lead, SNCC and CORE that had, for the most part, laid the foundation, created the climate, gone into the streets and set the stage for this march. Randolph and Rustin had done their time as well. They had fought their battles in the past. But you could sense that Wilkins and Young had lost the high ground before we even began. They had lost the moral authority on who should direct this march. We were all ready to work together for the sake of unity and for the success of this demonstration, but Roy Wilkins was in no position to tell us what to do.

None of this was said openly. It was just something that was sensed, and I think Wilkins sensed it, too. He was much more polite and deferential once the others had left the room and the meeting began.

It was interesting to watch Jim Farmer that day. He was usually a little louder than everyone else, but during this meeting he was almost subdued. This was partly because he was in the presence of Randolph, who was everyone's elder and had everyone's respect, and partly because Farmer was in the presence of Wilkins, the man who had been his boss when Farmer worked for the NAACP. It was one thing for Farmer to throw his weight around with a bunch of young kids, as he had done with us during the Freedom Rides. But it was quite another for him to be at a table with men like these.

As for Dr. King, he was very quiet. I think he was entirely comfortable and secure in the role he knew he had. He didn't have to say anything to assert or establish himself. He was the undisputed leader, the undisputed symbol of what the movement had come to, at least as that point in time. His very presence spoke for itself.

And me? I was just a young kid, one week into the chairmanship of a national organization, still getting a sense of where I was and what my responsibilities were. My natural inclination is to listen--to listen well--before I speak. In this case, I knew my time to speak would come later, but right now my job was to watch, absorb and learn. I was there to represent SNCC, the young arm of the movement, which was taken seriously now. We were included in this so-called coalition in the first place because there was no way not to include us. Rustin put it best during one of our early meetings, when he snorted, "I guess we got to deal with the Snickers.". . . The press, of course, besiegedto crowd around; to attack with requests and demands us as we came out of the meeting. The reporters were hungry to get each of our opinions on this event. For my part--for SNCC's part--I told them our intention was to keep the pressure on by continuing with the same demonstrations that had brought the President to the table in the first place.

"We do not want violence and we do not advocate it," I told one reporter. "But we will not slow down because of the possibility. Violence represents the frustration of the Negro community and the slow pace of progress in achieving real democracy, the only way to avoid this is to show tangible proof to the American Negro that his life is getting better."

Dealing with the press was suddenly a central part of my life, much more that it had ever been before. I understood when I took the position as chairman, that I was no longer involved in just a particular community, that the entire South, the entire country, was my concern and my focus now. Emotionally, intellectually, socially, I think I was prepared for this very visible role. But politically--among the various factions and forces of SNCC itself--I'm not sure I was ready, or even aware of, what I was in for.

From the beginning, people were coming at me from all sides, trying to force me into a more politically active role, to be more conscious and forceful in dealing with other civil rights organizations. Forman and Marion Barrycivil rights movement leader and a co-founder of SNCC kept pushing and saying, "Take on this person, take on that organization." Infighting and one-upmanship was the game, they told me. "Don't take the back seat," they'd say.

When I returned from that July meeting in New York, Forman took me aside and pointed at a newspaper photo where I'm at the end of the group, almost out of the frame. "You've got to get out front," he said. "Don't let King get all the credit. Don't stand back like that. Get out front."

I just never thought that way. Trying to get out front and worry about who's getting the credit, that's just never been my concern. Let's get the job done--that's how I feel. That's how I've always felt. Don't worry about the limelight. Get the job done, and there will be plenty of credit to go around.

I realize that attitude has sometimes--some would say often--resulted in my being overlooked now and then through the course of my life. I've never been the kind of person who naturally attracts the limelight.Why do you think Lewis is being somewhat self-deprecating here? I'm not a handsome guy. I'm not flamboyant. I'm not what you would call elegant. I'm short and stocky. My skin is dark, not fair--a feature that was still considered a drawback by many black people in the early '60s. for some or all of these reasons, I simply have never been the kind of guy who draws attention.

And I'm thankful for that. It's always seemed to me that the people who are fed by and who focus on visibility and notoriety and getting the credit don't have what you might call staying power. They rise and fall in the public eye, here today and gone tomorrow. Too often they become flashes in the pan, winding up in those "Where Are They Now" columns. It's sad. Dr. King used to talk about this. He said individuals who fall in love with public attention are not worthy of it. People who hunger for fame don't realize that if they're in the spotlight today, somebody else will be tomorrow. Fame never lasts. The work you do, the things you accomplish--that's what endures. That's what really means something. . . .

Now it was time to turn to the March on Washington. There was still plenty of resistance among the SNCC membership to taking part at all. President Kennedy had come back from his trip to Europe and immediately announced his support of the march, hailing it as a "peaceful assembly for the redress of grievancespart of the First Amendment that allows citizens to petition or make a complaint to the government .” His emphasis was on the word "peaceful," which quickly became the focal point of the administration, of the many government planners and agencies involved in coordinating the event, and of the many white liberal organizations that had signed on to become part of this.

All this arranging and orchestrating was alarming to many of us at SNCC. The sense of militancy, which was so central to most of our efforts, which was so much a part of our definition of ourselves, was being deflated. Civility had become the emphasis of this event. It was becoming a march in, not on Washington. The whole thing seemed to have been co-opted by the government--co-opted very deftly. What we had hoped would be a protest against government neglect was being turned into a propaganda tool to show the government as just and supportive. The Kennedy administration seemed to be trying to silence us in a way, to cool us off, to take the steam out of the movement, to get rid of the drama.

That dismayed many of my SNCC colleagues, and it dismayed me, too. But I also felt that no matter what tone this day might have, no matter what attitude others might bring to it, we needed to be there, to have our voice heard, in our own words, with our own tone. The eyes of the entire world were going to be on this event. The culmination of the day would be speeches by each of the leaders who planned it--including me. And so, in the middle of that month, about a week before the march was to take place, I began drafting what I would say.

I started with one of the staff people in our office in Atlanta, a young white woman named Nancy Stern. She typed while I talked, hashing out a rough shape of the points I felt we needed to make.

I wanted a strong speech, one that went beyond supporting a particular piece of legislation. I wanted a civil rights bill, certainly--a strong bill. We all wanted that. But we weren't going to beg for it. And besides, there was a much larger picture to address here. We wanted to send as strong a message as possible to the Kennedy administration that we felt the President was being too cautious, doing far to little when it came to meeting the needs of black Americans. Ever since his campaign in 1960 he had been talking about how he was going to do this and that in terms of civil rights legislation, and in actuality he had done virtually nothing. Meanwhile we were out in the streets across the South, taking a whipping.

My words needed to be forceful--I knew that. I didn't want to be part of a parade. I wanted to see discipline and organization on this day, but I wanted it to have an air of militancy as well, even some disruption if necessary--disciplined disruption. I have never stopped believing in the power of creative disruption. I have always believed in aggressive nonviolence. I've always believed in putting some sting into it. I wanted this march to have some sting, and if the only place for that sting would be in my speech, then I needed to make sure my words were especially strong.
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The text I had brought with me to New York already made clear our resolve to stay in the streets, to keep on pushing, that this was a revolution taking place in the American South--the word "revolution" was woven throughout the speech. But Courtland and TomCourtland Cox, who was the SNCC representative on the committee that helped plan the March on Washington, and Tom Kahn, who served as an aide to Bayard Rustin and helped plan the March on Washington felt that we needed something to make that idea even stronger--an image, an analogy. We battled around several ideas, and then Tom came up with the notion of using General William Sherman's "March to the Sea"a Civil War strategy of Union general William Sherman that ended in the capture of Atlanta, Georgia during the Civil War. Like Sherman, we were an army--a nonviolent army--bent on nothing less than destruction--the destruction of segregation. I liked that.

View of Crowd at 1963 March on Washington, by U.S. Information Agency

''We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here. They have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages, or no wages at all.''

And so, finally, I had a finished a draft of my speech, the words that would speak for SNCC in Washington:

We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here. They have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages, or no wages at all.

In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration's civil rights bill, for it is too little and too late. There's not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality.

This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses, for engaging in peaceful demonstrations. This bill will not protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear in a police state. This bill will not protect the hundreds of people who have been arrested on trumped-up charges. What about the three young men in Americus, Georgia, who face the death penalty for engaging in peaceful protest?

The voting section of this bill will not help thousands of black citizens who want to vote. It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia, who are qualified to vote but lack a sixth-grade education. "ONE MAN, ONE VOTE" is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours.

People have been forced to leave their homes because they dared to exercise their right to register to vote. What is there in this bill to ensure the equality of a maid who earns $5 a week in the home of a family whose income is $100,000 a year?

For the first time in one hundred years this nation is being awakened to the fact that segregation is evil and that it must be destroyed in all forms. Your presence today proves that you have been aroused to the point of action.

We are now involved in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, "My party is the party of principles?" The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party?

In some parts of the South we work in the fields from sunup to sundown for $12 a week. In Albany, Georgia, nine of our leaders have been indicted not by Dixiecrats but by the federal government for peaceful protest. But what did the federal government do when Albany's deputy sheriff beat attorney C. B. Kinga prominent civil rights lawyer based out of Albany, Georgia and left him half dead? What did the federal government do when local police officials kicked and assaulted the pregnant wife of Slater King, and she lost her baby?

It seems to me that the Albany indictment is part of a conspiracy on the part of the federal government and local politicians in the interest of expediency.

I want to know, which side is the federal government on?

The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery. The nonviolent revolution is saying, "We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting for hundreds of years. We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside of any national structure, that could and would assure us a victory."

To those who have said, "Be patient and wait," we must say that "patience" is a dirty and nasty word. We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually. We want our freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for both the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.

We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about. In the struggle, we must seek more than civil rights; we must work for the community of love, peace and true brotherhood. Our minds, souls and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all people.

The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it into the courts. Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens. The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won't be a "cooling-off" period.

All of us must get in the revolution. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and every hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution is complete. In the Delta of Mississippi, in southwest Georgia, in Alabama, Harlem, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and all over this nation, the black masses are on the march!

We won't stop now. All of the forces of Eastland, Barnett, Wallace and Thurmond won't stop this revolution. The time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington. We will march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own "scorched earth" policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground--nonviolently. We shall fragment the South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of democracy. We will make the action of the past few months look petty. And I say to you, WAKE UP AMERICA!

I felt satisfied. It was a good speech, a strong one. I put it to bed that Sunday night and got ready to go down to D.C. the next day. Randolph, Rustin, King--everyone had rooms at the Statler Hilton, where we would spend the final hours preparing for Wednesday's march.

Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from WALKING WITH THE WIND: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis with Michael D'Orso. Copyright © 1998 by John Lewis. All rights reserved.