Yesterday, gmgaston paid fitting tribute to the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I have a dream speech” from the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom by posting a video of the entire. 

The post brought to mind another speech from that same day, the one delivered by the youngest of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders who joined together to sponsor the march, John Lewis, National Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Lewis’s speech is a fascinating story, partly because of his life history and partly because of the behind-the-scenes drama leading up to his appearance.  

When John Lewis, the son of Alabama sharecroppers, was fifteen, one of the milestones of the civil rights movement occurred in nearby Montgomery—the famous bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King, Jr., to the leadership of the civil rights movement. Lewis, hearing King’s speeches and sermons on the family radio, determined to join the movement and to become a minister. He practice preaching to chickens in his parent’s barnyard.

After graduating from high school, Lewis thought of applying to Alabama’s Troy State College, but it was a white school. At his mother’s suggestion, he applied to American Baptist College in Nashville—in large part because he could work while attending the school and thus manage the tuition.  

After a few months, though, he decided to apply for a transfer to Troy to test the segregation laws of his home state. Officials at the Alabama school simply ignored his application, a common response among southern schools to applications from African Americans. Lewis thought of challenging the school and sent a letter to King, his hero, asking his advice. In a face-to-face meeting, King persuaded the teenaged Lewis to let the issue lie. This advice, along with Lewis’s fear of retribution against his parents , convinced him to stay at American Baptist College. After graduating, he enrolled at Nashville’s famous Fisk University.  

At Fisk, Lewis entered SNCC, launched in 1960 by several students from Fisk and other black colleges. After organizing some sit-ins in Nashveill, Lewis, in 1961, joined in the Freedom Rides, the James Farmer-organized effort to challenge segregated interstate bus stations in the South. Lewis was one of the first wave of riders and was beaten, with others, at the bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina.  

By 1963, Lewis had risen to the chairmanship of SNCC. As a measure of SNCC’s importance to the movement, he was invited to join as a sponsor of the March on Washington with King and four other civil rights leaders—A. Philip Randolph (head of the National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who had conceived of the march); James Farmer, Jr. (of CORE); Roy Wilkins (of the NAACP); and Whitney Young, Jr. (of the National Urban League).

Pretty heady company for a 23-year-old. But Lewis was not daunted.

He had a message to deliver. Recently the federal government had indicted nine civil rights workers, including some SNCC members, in Americus, Georgia—an indictment announced by Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In the draft of his speech* for the march on Washington, Lewis went right after the Kennedys: 

“Moreover, we have learned—and you—should know—since we are here for Jobs and Freedom—that within the past ten days a spokesmen for the Administration appeared in a secret session before the committee that’s writing the civil-rights bill and opposed and has almost killed a provision that would have guaranteed in voting suits, for the first time, a fair federal district judge. And, I might add, this Administration’s bill or any other civil rights bill—as the 1960 civil-rights act—will be totally worthless when administered by racist judges, many of whom have been consistently appointed by President Kennedy. I want to know, which side is the Federal Government on?” 

Lewis’s draft speech closed with fiery language sure to raise hackles in the South:  

“We won't stop now. All of the forces of Eastland, Barnett, Wallace, and Thurmond won't stop this revolution. The time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington. We will march through the South, through the Heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own ‘scorched earth’ policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground—non-violently. We shall fragment the South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of democracy. We will make the action of the past few months look petty. And I say to you , WAKE UP AMERICA!”  

The day before the march, the other leaders read Lewis’s draft with alarm. His indictment of the administration’s actions worried them. The closing lines compounded their fears. White supporters of the march, including the Archbishop Patrick O'Boyle of Washington, D.C.—scheduled to give the invocation opening the march—were disturbed by the speech too, and White House officials were not too pleased either. 

Civil rights leaders (not including King, who was out of town) met with Lewis in a Washington hotel room and pressed him to make changes. Surrounded by giants of the movement, he refused.  

On the day of the march, the speech was still being hotly debated. Burke Marshall dashed from the Justice Department to march headquarters with a revised draft. Archbishop O’Boyle flatly refused to give the invocation if the “scorched earth” language stayed in the speech. Bayard Rustin—Randolph’s right-hand man, and the man who had organized the march—calmed the archbishop with promises of changed language. He also got Randolph, King, and white clergyman Eugene Carson Blake (head of the National Council of Churches) to meet with Lewis to try to resolve the deadlock. 

Blake quickly objected to Lewis’s saying “revolution” and “the masses”: for Eisenhower’s personal pastor, these words sounded Communist. Lewis held firm. When Blake objected to the “scorched earth” phrase, though, Lewis was less adamant. Sensing an opening, King leaned in. “John, I know you as well as anybody. That doesn’t sound like you.” Lewis agreed to soften the tone, with King supplying new language. The group also convinced Lewis to eliminate the paragraph excoriating the Kennedy administration over the civil rights bill.

Many SNCC members later grumbled that the elders had squelched their voice, and the incident caused something of a rift between SNCC and older leaders of the movement—including King.

John Lewis did take the stage that day, though, and he did speak from the heart. Two paragraphs retained from the original draft eloquently stated the frustration of many in the movement with white politicians—particularly with what they saw as the Kennedy administration's coddling of southern Democratic segregationists: 

“We are now involved in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, ‘My party is the party of principles?’ The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party? 

To those who have said, ‘Be patient and wait,’ we must say that ‘patience’ is a dirty and nasty word. We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually. We want our freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for both the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.” 

Lewis’s closing paragraphs no longer had the reference to Sherman’s march that had bothered so many. Nevertheless, they signaled unshakeable resolve to continue pressing for results: 

“We will not stop. If we do not get meaningful legislation out of this Congress, the time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington. We will march through the South, through the streets of Jackson, through the streets of Danville, through the streets of Cambridge, through the streets of Birmingham. But we will march with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today. 

By the force of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the desegregated South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of God and democracy. 

We must say, ‘Wake up, America. Wake up!’ For we cannot stop, and we will not be patient.”  

After the Washington march, Lewis continued fighting for civil rights. He helped lead the 1964 “Freedom Summer” voting rights drive in Mississippi. In March of 1965, he co-led more than 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, toward Montgomery, only to be brutally beaten by state troopers, an event called “Bloody Sunday.” Lewis suffered a fractured skull.

Lewis remained committed to the principle of nonviolent protest, though other members of SNCC were becoming increasingly more militant. In 1966, Lewis left SNCC and was replaced as chairman by Stokely Carmichael. 

Lewis ran for a Georgia seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1977 but lost. In 1986, he was elected to the House as representative for Georgia’s Fifth District—a position he still holds.  

Lewis has received numerous awards and honors in his life. Perhaps the most fitting tribute, certainly the most hopeful, was the apology he received from Elwin Wilson, a member of the KKK in 1961, who was one of the men who attacked Lewis and when the Freedom Riders tried to enter the white-only waiting room at the Rock Hill bus station. Earlier this year, the two men met again. “I’m so sorry about what happened then,” Wilson said. “It’s OK. I forgive you,” Lewis replied.  

* Helping Lewis polish the speech had been fellow SNCC members Julian Bond and Eleanor Holmes. In 1986, Lewis defeated Bond in the Democratic primary for the Georgia 5th House seat. Bond later became chairman of the NAACP. Holmes—now Eleanor Holmes Norton—has served as the District of Columbia’s delegate to the House of Representatives since 1990.  

Words © 2009 AtHome Pilgrim.

All Rights Reserved.