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 10th 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.)
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