John Lewis, Civil Rights leader

John Lewis was well known for his fearless Civil Rights protest, but there was much more to his ministry.

The following quotation comes from John Lewis' book, Walking with the Wind, pg 381:

"Many of the same placed I'd spent time in during the first half of the decade.  Selma, Greenwood, Americas--they were the same, but they were different now, too.  No marching, no battalions of troopers, no press.  The press had moved north now, following the movement and the action and the cities.  The "revolution," riots, Black Panthers, campus unrest, Vietnam--these were the big stories now.  The civil rights movement was old news.  There were no more stories down south, at least not the kinds of stories that make front-page headlines."

"Little town like McComb and Rujeville, and Andalusia had problems now that wouldn't be helped by marching or singing.  The people living there could finally vote, but other needs--food and shelter and jobs--were wanting.  My job was about helping these people join together, helping them help one another to fill those needs.  It was about showing people how to pool what money they had to form a bank of their own, a credit union.  Or how to band together to buy groceries, or fee, or see, in bulk amounts at low prices--how to form cooperative."

"I finished my schoolwork during this time, earning my degree in philosophy from Fisk by writing a paper on the impact of the civil rights movement on organized religion in America.  My central thesis was that the movement essentially amounted to a religion phenomenon.  It was church-based, church-sanctioned; most of its members and tis activities flowed through and out of the black church, in small towns and rural communities as well as urban areas."

"That was what the church had come to mean to me.  I felt the spirit, the hand of the Lord, the power of the Bible--all of those things--but only when they flowed through the church and out into the streets.  As long as God and His teachings were kept inside the walls of a sanctuary, as they were when I was young, the church meant next to nothing to me."

"My work, my commitment to community, had become my church, both during the movement and now, as I was making my way on my own."