It is not often one gets to look history in the eye and shake its hand. But in 2016 that is what I was able to do when I had the honor of meeting Congressman John Lewis.
Lewis had traveled to New Hampshire to campaign for Hillary Clinton as she ran for president. He had come to a reception at the state Democratic Party headquarters in Concord.
I had read about John Lewis, watched all the documentaries, and listened to the iconic speeches, but nothing could compare to meeting the legend in person.
The room was abuzz in anticipation. People were more excited waiting for this man than I had ever seen with any other person coming to New Hampshire. No celebrity, actor, author or political superstar had ever generated the kind of excitement that was in the room that day. Someone announced that the car was in the driveway and a silence fell over the room so severe you could hear a pin drop, and when the congressman entered the room applause erupted. Everyone knew they were in the presence of a living legend.
Congressman Lewis’s history was that of the civil rights movement itself. He was one of the original Freedom Riders, who challenged segregated travel in 1961, and a founder of “SNICK” (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). He helped organize and was a speaker at the March on Washington. Lewis had been beaten, burned with cigarettes, spat on, tormented by mobs, and he absorbed body blows by law enforcement officers.
In one of the most infamous moments in civil rights history in March 1965, John Lewis marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., toward a waiting group of state troopers in riot gear to demand voting rights. When he and the protesters were ordered to disband, they silently stood their ground and the troopers responded with tear gas and bullwhips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. The resulting tumult came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” and Mr. Lewis’s skull was cracked with a billy club.
Televised images of this beating were among those that brought the nation to support the Voting Rights Act, which transformed the South and opened the door for people of color to run for public office.
Just before coming to New Hampshire that summer, Lewis had led a sit-in on the floor of Congress to protest federal inaction on gun violence prevention that drew the support of 170 lawmakers. His protest prompted Rep. Renny Cushing and myself to organize a similar sit-in on the House floor to protest New Hampshire’s own inaction on the background-check legislation.
Rep. Cushing and I were eager to speak with the congressman and ask his advice on our efforts for gun violence prevention legislation in New Hampshire. He passed along the sentiments he had passed along to many an elected official and activist over the years of his struggle, and I treasure his words: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year; it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
Thank you, John Lewis. We will miss you and, yes, I will keep trying to get in that “good trouble.”
(Rep. Katherine Rogers of Concord serves Merrimack District 28 in the N.H. House of Representatives.)