Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Giving up is unforgivable.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Books are my comfort food!

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

“But what about the lurkers?”

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

“woke” is the new caravan.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

He really is that stupid.

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / Due Respect: Honoring Rep. John Lewis

Due Respect: Honoring Rep. John Lewis

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… House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a joint news release that Lewis, the civil rights icon who was known as the “conscience of Congress,” will have an invitation-only arrival ceremony Monday, followed by a public viewing at the top of the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol on Monday and Tuesday.

There will also be a procession through Washington, where members of the public can pay their respects.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, masks will be required to enter the line, and social distancing will be enforced.

Lewis’ family is also asking members of the public not to travel from across the country to Washington. Instead, virtual tributes may be posted online using the hashtags #BelovedCommunity or #HumanDignity, the release said…

Lewis’ family Thursday night announced Celebration of Life ceremonies over six days, starting Saturday. Not all are open to the public because of concerns about the pandemic, and precautions like masks and social distancing will be required.

The events include a procession across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where Lewis was beaten in a march on March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday. Sunday’s event is called “The Final Crossing.”

Lewis will lie in state at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery before going to Washington. He will then lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta.

A celebration of life will be held at Ebenezer Baptist Church Horizon Sanctuary in Atlanta on Thursday…

Full schedule at the link.

Honoring Rep. John Lewis - STOCKPILE

… He was the bravest man I ever met. Heroes in war, most of them, know that the country will embrace them when they come home. They have that to sustain them in the worst circumstances. They already know they have a country worth fighting for. When John Lewis was riding buses, and using forbidden washrooms, and walking across the bridge, he didn’t have that on which to rely. In that violent, freighted time, he was a man without a country. His courage came from a different place. It came not from being a man without a country, but from being a man demanding a country, and he wanted this one. It was the same fire that burned in the Founders, in the 54th Massachusetts on the beach before Battery Wagner, in the Tuskegee Airmen over Europe, and in the 183rd Engineers when they walked, horrified, into Buchenwald to liberate the survivors. It was the same fire that illuminated the Civil Rights Movement when he was young, and the new one that rose in the years before his death. It is the most American of desires to demand this country for your own, and to demand it fulfill the promises it made to the world. John Lewis had the most American soul I ever saw.

Providence being the great tragedian that it is, he died at a time when citizens are being rounded up on the street by anonymous elements of law-enforcement and hustled into unmarked vans. He died at a time when a desperate and failed president* is threatening to bring this kind of Bull Connor policing to every city in the country. He died at a time when the Voting Rights Act lies in ruins, and when Florida has found a clever way to bring back a poll tax. He died at a time of bad trouble, when the country is desperately in need of the “good trouble” he always recommended to his fellow citizens. He boycotted the inauguration of this president, a misbegotten shell of a man, because he saw all the old, howling ghosts who were lining up behind him, waiting for another turn at perverting the country John Lewis demanded with his own blood. He saw it all coming, right up to what’s happening at this very moment, from the peak in the middle of the bridge from which he first saw the lines of troopers, slapping the nightsticks into their palms. He got as far as his mighty American soul would carry him. It’s up to us to get ourselves the rest of the way.

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  2. 2.

    WereBear

    Proof that amazing people can sprout from the most neglected of seeds in the stoniest of soil.

    However, imagine how many more people of greatness we could have if we nurtured them.

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    The events include a procession across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where Lewis was beaten in a march on March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday. Sunday’s event is called “The Final Crossing.”

    His coffin will be pulled in a horse drawn cart. I like that. It’s reminiscent of MLK’s funeral procession, a reminder of humble roots.

  4. 4.

    MoCA Ace

    He truly deserves a place in history above the Founders as he fought to correct their errors.

    Thank you for this post. it reminds me that not everything in this world is shit.  I cried when I read “Final Crossing”.

  5. 5.

    MoCA Ace

    And if that bridge isn’t renamed the John R. Lewis Bridge by the time his body crosses it we should tear that fucker down behind him, rivet-by-rivet.

    Ahhh… back to rage.  I feel more normal now.

  6. 6.

    Spanky

    @MoCA Ace: 
    John Lewis himself didn’t want it to be named after himself.

    @WereBear: 
    I don’t know. Seems that conflict forges stronger wills than careful nurturing produces. I hope to stick around long enough to see what comes of the kids of today.

  8. 8.

    Mary G

    I am determined to do everything I can to elect Democrats in November to honor his memory, and bravo to Eric Holder for calling out Republicans who try to jump in on our praise after trying to wreck  everything he accomplished.

  11. 11.

    laura

    It matters less that he was a great man – and a great man he was, than he was a good man. Greatness is larger than life, goodness is life itself, the day to day recommitment to goodness. I doubt John Lewis sought greatness, and that too is a reflection of what a good man he was. His memory is a blessing and if we honor him shouldn’t we seek to do good in our daily lives?

    Rest in power John Lewis- you were a great and a good man.

  12. 12.

    MoCA Ace

    @Spanky:

    @Sab:

    I will defer then to Mr. Lewis on the bridge renaming.

    Good to hear about the High School renaming though.  That’s gonna chap some white supremacist ass for sure

    ETA:  One fat pasty one in particular!

  13. 13.

    gwangung

    Rest in power, sir.

    You should be the patron saint of all the protests going on in America.

    Watch over them. Let them be safe.

  16. 16.

    AJ

    Thank you for this post

    It’s fitting to read of these public ritualsoof honoring him and the calling to account of hypocritical racists who praise his name and murder his legacy

  17. 17.

    Yutsano

    Rest with the angels sweet warrior. Your work is done, but we will continue the work you started. And this time see if we can really finish the deal. For you, I hope we will.

  18. 18.

    cmorenc

    @Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):

    A fitting tribute.

    Another one will be voting in November.

    That’s by far the most important way for those of us who truly recognize John Lewis’s life and accomplishments can honor him, in contrast to those-you-know-who-s who do nominal lip-service honor while working to undermine, dishonor, and reverse Lewis’s and the Civil Rights Movement’s accomplishments.

  19. 19.

    Ruckus

    @laura: 
    John Lewis didn’t want to be special, he wanted normal, to belong to humanity, to be a part of it, not sit on the outside and be beaten because of the color of his skin, a concept that this country has tried long and hard to avoid. He did a lot of the hard work that this country is very much not finished with yet to make that so. His message wasn’t that he should be celebrated or honored, but recognized for who he was and who all the people who look like him, to be considered equal, to be considered citizens. He did this in a country, that when he was born, considered him less than nothing, because of the color of his skin. He was more a citizen than the people who hated him because he was right, and his goal wasn’t to exclude them but to join them, be recognized for what he was, human being. He was the reality, the honesty, a proper citizen, a man who spent his life in the quest for inclusion into a nation of promise, that has not been fulfilled, but due to him, is closer than it was.

  20. 20.

    SiubhanDuinne

    This is a beautiful thread. I love the O/P and every one of the comments.

    I just needed to say that.

  24. 24.

    laura

    @Ruckus: You stated it so much better than I – and I worried people would mistaken believe I was trying to take John Lewis down a peg and almost deleted my comment. Thank you.

  26. 26.

    Mike in NC

    Wife graduated from Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield, VA many years ago. I convinced her he was just another Confederate villain. Maybe she can sell her yearbook to a fan.

  27. 27.

    Redshift

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: And Karl Frisch, who I am proud that I helped get elected to the school board, has introduced a proposal to allow past graduates to request a new diploma. (Also for Justice High School, renamed from JEB Stuart in 2017.)

  28. 28.

    Redshift

    I drove by John Lewis High School today, and they’ve flipped the sign like a defunct business in a strip mall, until they get a new one made. Warms my heart.

  29. 29.

    Redshift

    I’m so glad they figured out a way to have a public event for the great man in these terrible times. I’m definitely going downtown for that.

  30. 30.

    J R in WV

    I think providing new diplomas to the graduates is a great thing. I am old enough and cynical enough to know that some grads will throw away their new diploma with John Lewis on it. Fuck them, some day they will regret that rash decision.

    I hope the school board does make an offer to older graduates to receive new diplomas with the name of an actual hero on them. Even if it costs a reproduction fee, some will take them up on it.

  31. 31.

    Ruckus

    @laura:

    You did just fine.

    I used more words but the sentiment was the same. And this is a bug of mine. Racists think that he’s trying to take something away from them – and to some degree that’s true, but in real terms he’s not. He didn’t want to be special, neither did MLK or really any one. They want to be equal to the premise of the country, which is that all  humans are equal, none better, none worse. This was, if I recall correctly, the first country to say that explicitly. OK we used men rather than humans, but we’ve clarified that. Now we have to get the country to actually do that. And that means no racist fucks for president, ever again. That means that wealth doesn’t buy you citizenship or more than a place to live. Government/society should not revolve around your skin color or your genitalia, or your educational degree, or your bloodline. You are born here or naturalized you are equal. You visit, work in, struggle in this country, wait for years to become naturalized, you are still a human being, with all the rights of being human. You don’t get assaulted for speaking out, for protesting injustice. You don’t fear your police/government, they work for us, they exist for us. This is our country, all us, our country, it doesn’t belong to the wealthy, or the racist fucks, it belongs to all of us. We stand democratically united or we fall separated as the republicans want. Actually I have no idea what those fuckers want, other than it’s not what the United States stands for, what it was founded for, what hundreds of thousands have died for. It is not a racist, hateful, poor nation that America stands for.

  33. 33.

    Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)

    @Ruckus: Beautifully said – thank you for this. It’s particularly wrenching because I’m old enough that this:

    He did this in a country, that when he was born, considered him less than nothing, because of the color of his skin.

    applies to me too. I think of my grandfathers and what they went through (particularly the ones I never got to meet) – short of my death there’s no way I don’t make it to the voting booth.

    Vote for your life – because you ARE.

  34. 34.

    Geminid

    Rest in Power, John Lewis. As Carl Sandberg wrote of Abraham Lincoln: a tree is best measured when it has fallen.

  35. 35.

    Ruckus

    @Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):

    60 years ago, when I started my working life as an actual child, at my dad’s new business, I met a man who didn’t so much change my life as open my eyes to a world that I didn’t often see and didn’t live in at all. Richard worked for my dad. As black as midnight on a moonless night, he was built like an NFL lineman. And was the gentlest, one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. He didn’t do anything other than be a normal good human being. He treated me as an equal. Not as the bosses brat or as a better human because of my skin color. As an equal. I learned more about humanity from Richard than I think any other human being. It took me a few years to see and understand all this about him but it has stuck with me for ever. We are the humans we want to be, we can be normal, we can be hateful. It’s not destined, it’s a choice. My parents saw color, but didn’t let it make decisions for them. I’m very lucky for that. Richard showed me that color is just a trait, like hair, or your gender. You aren’t born with hate, you develop that, you learn that, you don’t have to do that. It’s a choice.

    Richard gave me that.

    Best gift ever.

  39. 39.

    greenergood

    @Ruckus: I’ve been pretty together till now – but your post has made me weep, which I probably should’ve done a few days ago. Thank you. His leaving and everything else going on just now is full of so many conflicting emotions, and hopes, and fears.  It’s impossible to sort them all out – so it’s time to just learn to live with them all and see how we can keep the good ones above the surface, and hope the bad ones drown …

  40. 40.

    Feathers

    Great news on renaming the school.

    That said, as someone grew up in NoVa who went to a rival school and was in the marching band… the cheerleading squad is going to have to be very creative in coming up with cheers. Back in my day, it was all beat, crush, smash your opponents. Somebody’s going to have to go over the cheers carefully to avoid some severe inappropriateness. My old school is white-minority, so they should be OK, but somebody is going to think “Beat John Lewis” is hilarious and pretend they never realized it would sound bad.

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