Recently I’ve been reading about Civil Rights hero John Lewis. I read his weighty biography, Walking With the Wind, as well as a couple shorter, kind of “rah-rah” books that collected some of his inspiring wisdom. It felt timely on the heels of the ICE surge in Minnesota.

What did I learn?

• A reminder that the Civil Rights Movement is recent history. Math, obviously, but plenty of people lived through it and are still alive. They saw ‘White’ and ‘Colored’ drinking fountains in their daily lives. It’s just shocking.
• A man who beat John Lewis came to him decades later and apologized. The only one who did. And of course Lewis forgave him. He said in effect: I have no animus toward you as a person, you were caught up in a racist system. That’s kind of staggering.
• The Civil Rights Movement took that ‘nonviolent’ thing seriously. I knew that, but seeing it carried out was wild. It meant forgiving the person who beat you. It meant not pressing charges against the person who beat you. It meant not posting bail.
• The Civil Rights Movement in general and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in particular, fractured at the seams over tactics and strategy. There’s an incredible amount of infighting among movements like these.
• The root cause of Jim Crow in the South was that many white people simply did not believe the credo of the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal.’ Their justification was that the races should remain separate, there shouldn’t be mixing, etc. “We’re just too different,” they might have said, trying to keep the conversation polite. It’s literally white supremacy. And it’s wild to me that it was never put that way: You don’t believe in equality. Perhaps it’s just a different time, but that seems like a heinous accusation today. At the same time, that attitude enjoys a resurgence when we talk about certain groups today.
• In comparing it to Operation Metro Surge, it’s fascinating how motivated and committed the protestors had to be. Today, we hail them as heroes. But back then they were radicals. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a popular person. It’s similar to how some people just assume that any kind of resistance to the powers that is a bad thing. Our country is founded on this kind protest (to the point of violence—property damage and ultimately war), but if the other side is doing it, it’s traitorous.