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But he also got a taste of victory.
And it consumed him with righteous
purpose. And he took the battle deeper
into the South.

That same year, just weeks after the
Supreme Court ruled that segregation
of interstate bus facilities was
unconstitutional, John and Bernard
Lafayette bought two tickets, climbed
aboard a Greyhound, sat up front, and
refused to move. This was months
before the first official Freedom Rides.
He was doing a test. The trip was
unsanctioned. Few knew what they
were up to. And at every stop, through
the night, apparently the angry driver
stormed out of the bus and into the
bus station. And John and Bernard The historic march from Selma to Montgomery, 1965( FILE PHOTO)
had no idea what he might come back
with or who he might come back
with. Nobody was there to protect Hosea Williams and others led them the conversations they had afterwards.
them. There were no camera crews to across that bridge anyway. And we’ve You can imagine them saying, “yeah,
record events. You know, sometimes, all seen the film and the footage we showed them.” They figured they’d
we read about this and kind of take it and the photographs, and President turned the protesters back over the
for granted. Or at least we act as if it Clinton mentioned the trench coat, the bridge; that they’d kept, that they’d
was inevitable. Imagine the courage of knapsack, the book to read, the apple preserved a system that denied the
two people Malia’s age, younger than to eat, the toothbrush - apparently jails basic humanity of their fellow citizens.
my oldest daughter, on their own, to weren’t big on such creature comforts. Except this time, there were some
challenge an entire infrastructure of And you look at those pictures and cameras there. This time, the world
John looks so young and he’s small saw what happened, bore witness to
John was only twenty years old. But he Black Americans who were asking
pushed all twenty of those years to the ... the world saw what happened, for nothing more than to be treated
center of the table, betting everything, bore witness to Black Americans like other Americans. Who were not
all of it, that his example could who were asking for nothing asking for special treatment, just the
challenge centuries of convention, and more than to be treated like other equal treatment promised to them a
generations of brutal violence, and Americans. century before, and almost another
countless daily indignities suffered by century before that.
African Americans. When John woke up, and checked
in stature. Looking every bit that shy,
Like John the Baptist preparing the serious child that his mother had himself out of the hospital, he would
way, like those Old Testament prophets raised and yet, he is full of purpose. make sure the world saw a movement
speaking truth to kings, John Lewis God’s put perseverance in him. that was, in the words of Scripture,
did not hesitate - he kept on getting “hard pressed on every side, but not
on board buses and sitting at lunch And we know what happened to the crushed; perplexed but not in despair;
counters, got his mugshot taken again marchers that day. Their bones were persecuted, but not abandoned;
and again, marched again and again cracked by billy clubs, their eyes and struck down, but not destroyed.” They
on a mission to change America. lungs choked with tear gas. As they returned to Brown Chapel, a battered
knelt to pray, which made their heads prophet, bandages around his head,
Spoke to a quarter million people at even easier targets, and John was and he said more marchers will come
the March on Washington when he struck in the skull. And he thought he now. And the people came. And the
was just 23. troopers parted. And the marchers
was going to die, surrounded by the
Helped organize the Freedom Summer sight of young Americans gagging, reached Montgomery. And their
words reached the White House - and
in Mississippi when he was just 24. and bleeding, and trampled, victims in Lyndon Johnson, son of the South,
At the ripe old age of 25, John was their own country of state-sponsored said “We shall overcome,” and the
asked to lead the march from Selma violence. Voting Rights Act was signed into law.
to Montgomery. He was warned And the thing is, I imagine initially God bless you all. God bless America.
that Governor Wallace had ordered that day, the troopers thought that they God bless this gentle soul who pulled
troopers to use violence. But he and had won the battle. You can imagine it closer to its promise.

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