Blessed are the Good Troublemakers: A Tribute to John Lewis

It isn’t one of the Beatitudes, but I think Jesus could have said, Blessed are the good troublemakers. And I am sure Jesus would have many positive things to say about John Lewis, who died on July 17, 2020, and the way he espoused “good trouble.” 

The Making of Good Troublemaker Lewis

John Robert Lewis was born in February 1940 near Troy, Alabama, about 50 miles southwest of Montgomery. His parents were sharecroppers, but he had a happy, though very segregated, life as a boy.

He was 15 years old and in the 10^th grade in 1955 when he heard of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. Later, as an adult he told high school students how when he was their age, “I got in trouble. I got in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

He challenged the students he was speaking to: “Go out there and be a headlight and not a taillight. Get out there and get in the way, get in good trouble, necessary trouble . . . .”

His first troublemaking was when he tried to integrate his local library. That was in 1956 when I was a freshman in college, but Lewis couldn’t even use the public library because he was Black. Then he tried to enroll in an all-White college, and his application was never answered.

Lewis wrote MLK, Jr., asking for help, and King sent him a round-trip bus ticket to come to Montgomery to meet with him. By that time Lewis was a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville. In 1958 he made the nearly 300-mile trip back to Alabama to talk with King.

In Nashville, Lewis also met and was deeply influenced by Jim Lawson, known as “the non-violent activist who mentored John Lewis.”

Lewis said that Lawson taught him “the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence”—and that way was integral to his activities as a good troublemaker.*

The Legacy of Good Troublemaker Lewis

Lewis had a long and distinguished career in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 until his death last year.

Now the illustrious legacy of Lewis is being widely recognized. Last year eminent author Jon Meacham’s book His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope was published. Also in 2020, CNN Films produced Good Trouble, a splendid documentary about Lewis.

This month, an imposing statue of Lewis has been erected in a new Atlanta park. A Nashville road named for Lewis will be dedicated this week. The christening of a Navy ship named after Lewis is scheduled for July 17.

A crowning tribute will be the passing of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act later this year.

Blessed are the good troublemakers; their legacy will live on.

Learning from Good Troublemaker Lewis

Lewis stands in a long line of good troublemakers. Earlier this year, Andy Roland, a retired Anglican vicar in the UK, published a book titled Jesus the Troublemaker.

Last year I posted a blog article about Daneen Akers’s book Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, which includes people of the past such as Francis of Assisi and Harriet Tubman. I suggested that she should include Lewis in her planned second volume.

It needs to be noted, though, that there are no “good troublemakers” for those who benefit from the status quo and wish to protect it. Those who inveigh against troublemakers are mostly people who like the way things are in the present and want to preserve their privileged position.

In the Afterword of Meacham’s book, Lewis wrote,

The teaching of individuals like James Lawson, Gandhi, and Dr. King lift us. They move us, and they tell us over and over again if another person can do just that, if another generation can get in the way or get in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble, I, too, can do something. I, too, can get in trouble for the greater good (p. 248).

Can we learn, and act upon, that from John Lewis?

And can't we affirm that, indeed, good troublemakers are blessed?

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* The above paragraphs have drawn heavily from a February 2020 article by Marian Wright Edelman, founder of Children’s Defense Fund. (My 11/25/14 blog post was about Ms. Edelman.)