The Boy Preacher
The Boy Preacher
"I preached to my chickens just about every night.
"I would get them all into the henhouse and settle them in their roosts.
"They would sit quietly. They would bow their heads. They would shake their heads.
"But they would never quite say 'Amen.'"
Hear Congressman Lewis recall preaching to his family's chickens as a boy. - Courtesy of WGBH
Sit-Ins Across The South
Sit-Ins Across The South
On Monday, February 1, 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, four freshmen from North Carolina A&T took seats at the downtown Woolworth's lunch counter.
The next day, nineteen students—black and white—had joined the original four at Woolworth's.
By Wednesday, the number swelled to 85, and similar sit-ins had formed in Raleigh and Durham.
Then, on February 7th, one week after the Greensboro sit-ins, we began ours.
Learn how Reverend James Lawson and the Nashville Student Movement laid the foundation for the Greensboro effort and other successful sit-ins. - Courtesy of the SNCC Digital Gateway
Freedom Rides
Freedom Rides
In late March 1961, a friend showed me an ad in The Student Voice, a monthly SNCC* publication.
It announced that the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was seeking volunteers to test the Supreme Court decision from the previous year, Boyton v. Virginia, which outlawed segregation and racial discrimination on buses and in bus terminals.
On my application, I wrote: "I know that an education is important and I hope to get one, but human dignity is the most important thing in my life."
*Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Hear the story of the Freedom Riders, who risked life and limb to test the South's commitment to segregation. - Courtesy of PBS LearningMedia
March On Washington:
August 28th, 1963
March On Washington:
August 28th, 1963 March On Washington 1963
August 28th, 1963 March On Washington 1963
(August 28th, 1963)
"I appeal to all of you to get in this great revolution that is sweeping this nation.
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 of 1776 is complete. We must get in this revolution—
"—and COMPLETE the revolution."
You've heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech but you likely have not heard John Lewis's speech, nor the firsthand accounts of other activists who participated in this turning point in the civil rights movement. - Courtesy of Smithsonian Magazine
Freedom Summer of 1964
Freedom Summer of 1964
No person represented more to what SNCC was attempting to accomplish in Mississippi than a woman named Fannie Lou Hamer:
"Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave,
"Where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened DAILY—
"—Because we want to live as DECENT HUMAN BEINGS, in America?"
Learn how Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, and SNCC brought the brutal violence and oppression of the South to television screens around the country, forcing a nationwide moral reckoning. - Courtesy of Public Broadcasting Service
Selma: March 7th, 1965
Selma: March 7th, 1965
"We are marching today to dramatize to the nation, and to the world, that hundreds and thousands of Negro citizens of Alabama, but particularly here in the Black Belt area, are denied the right to vote.
We intend to march to Montgomery to present certain grievances to Governor George C. Wallace.
"I hope we won't get stopped—
"But if we do, we are going to stand there and try to negotiate, and talk them into letting us go ahead to Montgomery."
The ruthless beating of peaceful marchers on "Bloody Sunday"—including a young John Lewis—by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge dramatized the struggle for voting rights. - Courtesy of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University
Are You Ready...
Are You Ready...
...to join the march to the voting booth?
As the late Congressman John Lewis often said, "the vote is precious, almost sacred, it is the most powerful non-violent tool or instrument we have in a democratic society and WE must USE it." Are you ready to join the march to protect voting rights? Tell Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act!
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