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?

_____

* 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.)

Holy Troublemakers

The Honorable John Lewis, the noted civil-rights leader who served in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1987 until his death earlier this year, tweeted in June 2018, “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Rep. Lewis is not included in Daneen Akers’s 2019 book published under the title Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, but perhaps he will be included in the second volume already planned. 

Introducing Holy Troublemakers

Some of you may know of Mike Morrell. He was the sub-author of Richard Rohr’s book The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation  (2016). Among the many hats Mike wears, he curates the Speakeasy network, which is a collective of bloggers, who among other things review books.

I have received and reviewed a few books for Speakeasy, and that is how I came to read Akers’s book about “holy troublemakers.” I didn’t know when I requested it that it is a book for young readers, but the stories of 36 “troublemakers” were of sufficient interest to this old man, although I didn’t need the 16-page Glossary at the end.

Akers’s attractive book tells the story of a wide variety of people, beginning with Alice Paul and ending with Wil Gafney. (After a bit I caught on that the people are introduced in alphabetical order by their first names, and later I found out that Rev. Gafney is a former student of Thinking Friend Michael Willett Newheart, a former student of mine.)

Some of the “holy troublemakers” and/or “unconventional saints” included are some of my favorite people about whom I have written about in this blog—people such as Francis of Assisi, Florence Nightingale, and Gustavo Gutiérrez.

The book also includes many people whom I learned about for the first time, such as Ani Zonneveld (a Malaysian Muslim), Irwin Keller (a Jewish rabbi), and Lisbeth Melendez Rivera (a Puerto Rican active now with Rainbow Catholics).

As described on the HolyTroublemakers.com website, “Holy Troublemakers and Unconventional Saints is an illustrated children’s storybook featuring the stories of people of diverse faiths who worked for more love and justice in their corner of the world, even when that meant rocking the religious boat.”

Introducing Akers

Many of the people introduced in this book grew up as conservative Christians, as did author Akers herself, who says on page two that she “grew up in a deeply loving family with five generations of roots in a conservative Christian denomination,” which I found out elsewhere was the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Akers quite apparently grew into embracing a broad ecumenical religious worldview and a warm, accepting attitude toward other people, especially those who suffer discrimination or societal mistreatment.

As we are informed on the website, Akers’s book “emphasizes the stories of women, LGBTQ people, people of color, Indigenous people, and others too often written out of religious narratives.”

Two-thirds of the people introduced in Akers’s book are women, and just over half are people of color. Moreover, even though she is a white Christian, Akers includes Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists in her book—and also a chapter on Valarie Kaur, a remarkable Sikh woman.

At least ten of the 36 troublemakers/saints are LGBTQ people, and six or more others are allies. Akers informed me that there are so many profiles of LGBTQ holy troublemakers and unconventional saints in the book because that's “a demographic that's too often been excluded from religious narratives.”

Recommending Akers’s Book

This book may have too much emphasis on LGBTQ people for it to be broadly recommended. On the other hand, maybe for that very reason, it needs to be recommended for a wide reading public. After all,

LGBTQ LIVES MATTER

In particular, I especially recommend this book to two types of families: to those who have family members or close friends who are LGBTQ—and to families who harbor negative feelings toward LGBTQ people.

The book is a bit pricey, but it is a beautifully done and valuable book. It could certainly be a good investment for parents to purchase and to read/discuss with their children over 36 days. 

Pres. Johnson’s Scintillating Selma Speech

Fifty years ago this month, the small city of Selma, Alabama, was much in the news. And now Selma is in the news again, partly because it is the 50^th anniversary of what happened in 1965 but also because of the movie “Selma,” nominated for an Academy Award as the best picture of 2014.

The Oscar was not given to “Selma,” but it is a fine movie. June and I usually wait to see movies (with subtitles) when they come out on DVD. But we went to see “Selma” at the local theater—and then I went to the Plaza in Kansas City for a special showing sponsored by a group I plan to write about next month.

At the latter showing, Dr. Tex Sample, a retired professor from St. Paul School of Theology and a relatively new friend of mine, spoke, and responded to questions, about his participation in the last day of the successful march from Selma to Montgomery. It was quite interesting to hear the first-hand report of someone who was there.

As you know, there were three attempts by African-Americans and their supporters to march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, approximately 55 miles away.

John Lewis leading 3/7/65 march

The first march was on March 7 with 600 people setting out for the capital. They didn’t get far: at the bridge spanning the Alabama River on the south side of the city state troopers wielding whips, nightsticks and tear gas attacked the group and drove them back into town.

That brutal event is known as “Bloody Sunday” (which I wrote about in 2013). John Lewis, a current U.S. Representative from Georgia, was among those severely beaten that day.

(Built in 1940, that bridge was named for Edmund Pettus, 1821-1907, a former Confederate brigadier general, a Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and then a U.S. Senator from Alabama.)

A second march two days later was led by Martin Luther King, Jr., but suddenly he stopped on the same bridge, knelt down in prayer, and then turned around and went back to downtown Selma. Many were critical of King for not pressing on, and it is unclear why he didn’t.

That evening, James Reeb, a white minister from Boston who had come to join the Selma march, was called a “white ni**er” and severely beaten. He died two days later.

My friend Tex, who lived in Boston at the time, knew Reeb personally and was shocked by his brutal killing. So he, along with many others from across the country, went to join the third Selma march, which started on March 21. There were about 3,200 who set out that day. By the time they reached the capitol four days later, that number had swelled to about 25,000.

In between the second and third marches, President Johnson made a nationally televised speech on March 15. Consequently, the federal government provided military troops to protect those who went on that third march.

The movie “Selma” has been criticized by some for its portrayal of President Johnson. Since it was a Hollywood movie and not a documentary, it is quite likely that some of what Johnson supposedly said and did was not historically accurate. In the end, though, he is shown very favorably in that March 15 address—and listening to his scintillating speech brought tears to my eyes.

President Johnson, March 15, 1965

Two days later President Johnson sent a bill to congress and in August he signed it, the Voting Rights Act, into law—and the dream of the Selma marchers thereby became reality.

“Bloody Sunday”

It happened on March 7, 1965. That was the date of “Bloody Sunday,” the fateful day when peaceful protesters who were trying to march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery were severely beaten by local and state police. They were marching primarily for voting rights.

I am embarrassed to say that I was so absorbed in my own activities that I don’t really remember hearing about that terrible day at the time. But because of what seems to be a very questionable move in the U.S. Supreme Court, I have learned about the events in and around Selma in 3/65 from the news this past week.

For example, the cover story on the front page of last Thursday’s USA Today was “A Crack in Civil Rights Law?” The crack referred to is conservative justices questioning Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that was first enacted in August 1965, five months after Bloody Sunday.

A similar article in the 2/27 New York Times reports how Justice Scalia, the court’s senior member, referred to the provisions of the VRA being a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” I have never been a “fan” of Justice Scalia, but to call a bill which seeks to safeguard voting rights of all Americans a “racial entitlement” seems particularly asinine to me.

One of the people who suffered serious injury on Bloody Sunday was John Lewis (b. 1940 in Alabama). Lewis, who has been the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5^th congressional district since 1987, was interviewed by Richard Wolf for the 2/28 issue of USA Today.

Wolf wrote that Lewis, who “has been marching for voting rights for more than half a century,” declares that that is not long enough “for the Supreme Court to decide that the finish line has been reached.” It is not long enough because of lingering impediments to equal voting rights for some American citizens, especially people of color.

Lewis, who was the student body of American Baptist Theological Seminary (in Nashville, now known as American Baptist College) in 1961, the year of his graduation, was arrested 40 times from 1960 to 1966. He still bears the scar on his head from being billy clubbed on Bloody Sunday, a blow so strong he might well have died from it.

John Lewis being billy clubbed on March 7, 1965

Eight days later, on March 15, 1965, President Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling for voter rights legislation. In that speech, he proclaimed, “We shall overcome!” (That bold statement reportedly touched Martin Luther King, Jr., so deeply that he wept.) In August, then, the Voter Registration Act was approved by Congress and signed by the President.

Four times since then, the VRA has been re-affirmed by Congress—in 1970, 1975, 1982, and again in 2006, when the Senate voted 98-0 in favor of it. But now Shelby Co. v. Holder is calling the constitutionality of the VRA into question, and at least four of the SCOTUS Justices seem to be in favor of declaring it unconstitutional.

Nevertheless, the initial zeal for voting rights of the Selma marchers, and the disgraceful activities of the Alabama law enforcement officers, is not being forgotten. On March 3, Vice-President Biden traveled to Selma to mark the 48^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. (See a CBS News link here.)

In The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America (2012), American historian James T. Patterson writes that Bloody Sunday is “a pivotal date in the history of the civil rights movement” (p. 80). Let’s hope and pray that the SCOTUS won’t gut the VRA and endanger the gains in voter rights made in the past 48 years.