Volume 25 Issue 27

July 26, 2020

GREATER HOUSTON EDITION

Vol. 25, Issue 27

BLACK VOTES MATTER

LEWIS’ ORIGINAL MARCH ON WASHINGTON SPEECH

“CONSCIENCE OF THE CONGRESS”

John Robert Lewis, the longtime congressman who loved “Good Trouble” in the fight for civil rights died July 17 after a six-month battle with cancer. He was 80.

Lewis announced his diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in December 2019, but vowed to fight to the end, as he has always done.

“I have been in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life.

I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now,” Lewis said.

News of the congressman’s death shocked the nation.

“It is with inconsolable grief and enduring sadness that we announce the passing of U.S. Rep. John Lewis,” his family said in a statement. “He was honored and respected as the Conscience of the US Congress and an icon of American history, but we knew him as a loving father and brother. He was a stalwart champion in the ongoing struggle to demand respect for the dignity and worth of every human being. He dedicated his entire life to non-violent activism and was an outspoken advocate in the struggle for equal justice in America. He will be deeply missed.”

There was no shortage of condolences and fond memories shared about Lewis.

“He was a courageous person and very determined to try to get most things correct in terms of our right to vote. The question now is, ‘who can fill his shoes?’ Like Lewis said, ‘you have to bite the bullet.’ He was beaten so many times and still didn’t give up,” said Shirley Ann Malonson, president and chief editor of AfricanAmerican News&Issues.

“It seemed he was our last glimmer of hope.”

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, U. S. Representative for Texas’ 18th

congressional district, remarked on how Lewis would want us to keep moving forward.

“John would say that we cannot wait to improve and restore voting rights. He kept pressing. We cannot wait to fight against children in cages at the border. We cannot wait when gun violence continues to override our nation,” Lee said. “I consider him a beloved friend and I am very happy to have been able to have spoken to him in the last week. He was strong, he was commited and I think his legacy will be John Lewis cont’d on page 3

John Lewis was the youngest person, at age 23, to address the crowd at the March on Washington, but DID YOU KNOW his original speech was more fiery than the one he used that day? Philip Hannan, a Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C. at the time, received a copy of the speech ahead of time and found it came across as too incendiary. So, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, and other movement leaders made changes to the speech before Lewis stepped up to the podium.

Here are some key excerpts: …In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration’s civil rights bill, for it is too little and too late. There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality. …The voting section of this bill will not help thousands of black citizens who want to vote. It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia, who are qualified to vote but lack a sixth-grade education.

“ONE MAN, ONE VOTE” is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours. …People have been forced to leave their homes because they dared to exercise their right to register to vote. What is there in this bill to ensure the equality of a maid who earns $5 a week in the home of a family whose income is $100,000 a year? …In some parts of the South we work in the fields from sunup to sundown for $12 a week. In Albany, Georgia, nine of our leaders have been indicted not by Dixiecrats but by the federal government for peaceful protest. But what did the federal government do

when Albany’s deputy sheriff beat attorney C. B. King and left him half dead? What did the federal government do when local police officials kicked and assaulted the pregnant wife of Slater King, and she lost her baby? …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. …The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it into the courts. Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens.

The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won’t be a “cooling-off ” period. …We won’t stop now. All of the forces of Eastland, Bamett, 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 — nonviolently. 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! - AANI

WASH YOUR HANDS FREQUENTLY • AVOID PUBLIC SPACES OR EVENTS WITH MORE THAN 10 PATRONS • SANITIZE AND STOCK UP • AVOID TOUCHING YOUR EYES, NOSE AND MOUTH • PRACTICE GOOD HYGIENE

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July 26, 2020

EDITORIAL

President/Chief Editor

Tristar

Griselda Ramirez: Production

A Revival of God

Partin’ the Waters

Consciousness Bobby E. Mills, PhD

By Omowale Luthuli-Allen

Office: (713) 692-1892

GREATER HOUSTON EDITION

Humble TRANSFORMERS who specialized in ‘Good Trouble’ Pancreatic Cancer did not take Congressman John Lewis home. Although pancreatic cancer is the deadliest of cancers, it could not take down an UNMOVABLE FORCE. John Lewis’ soul spoke to eternity and asked if he had done enough.

The answer was “COME HOME, Fly Away, you have done enough.”

Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian was called the greatest preacher that ever lived by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Vivian started making “good trouble” when he was a young man. He tirelessly worked with Jim Lawson to launch the sit in movement that spread to Galveston and Houston, Texas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the entire South.

After the Civil War, there were 10,000 acts of mob violence against African Americans in the United States. Historian John Hope Franklin says there were 3,500 African Americans lynched between 1865 and 1910. In 1925, three Black men were murdered and lynched in Bryan, Texas within a twomonth span.

Blood in the fields, outrage on the streets and tears at the mourning bench created a new generation of fighter-leaders that decided to launch an unrelenting attack on American hypocrisy.

John Lewis and C.T. Vivian were both part of the historic 1965 march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge

Sammy Young Jr. was a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

He is remembered as the first college student to be murdered during the civil rights struggle in the 1960’s. He was murdered for drinking from a “white only” water fountain.

Ms. Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old white housewife and mother of five from Detroit, was moved to go to the deep South and helped organized the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge march, along with Lewis, Vivian and James Former.

Shortly thereafter, the Klu Klux Klan murdered her with impunity. Sammy and Viola did not crack 40 years old, but they lived consecrated lives that were built around quality of life and not longevity.

The beloved congressman did not prefer the honorifics, he said just call me John. As an elected official, he was subject to stand when you came in the room, knowing that he worked for the people.

Lewis was beaten and bloodied in Birmingham.

Mobs with baseball bats, axe handle, and tire irons had the devil in their hearts and tried to kill him. Vivian faced down a fascist sheriff Bull Connor and his dogs, jails and cattle prods of white privilege.

All of us, Black and white, owe a huge debt to the fearless ones; Diane Nash,

Fred Shuttleworth, Ernest McMillan and the SNCC fighters who organized and fought at ground zero of racial oppression. Deloyd Parker and the SHAPE Center faithful have taken community youth on annual Civil Rights tours to ground zero for decades to study this history and give these icons their props while they lived.

John and CT realized that the struggle was not over.

If I may, John Lewis wants all of us who are awfulizing and catastrophizing, bitching and moaning to know no matter what is going on in your life, there is someone in greater distress, somewhere in your town, somewhere in the world. John and CT lived the maxim that everyone of us can strengthen someone with a small act of charity.

John loved the Black Lives Matter movement and his heart danced when he saw young Americans fighting for racial justice on behalf of Big Floyd, Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor.

Did John really believe that the black and white ivory could play a melody of harmony for many races, cultures, classes and interest groups.? Well the reformed racist that had bloodied his head asked him for forgiveness decades after the beating.

John practiced what he preached and fully accepted the apology.

Rest enough traveler, COME HOME, you have done your best….

Congressman John Lewis: An American Icon “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.” Congressman John Lewis was such a saint, and now he is a historic legend.

From humble religious beginnings, Lewis was one of the courageous leaders who marched shoulder to shoulder with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights notables. Congressman Lewis dedicated his life to protecting human rights and securing civil liberties for all Americans.

Because of his dedication to the highest spiritualethical-moral-standards, he will be remembered as the “Conscience of the Congress,” and the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement/Human Rights Movement. Lewis is one of the many civil rights saints that talked the talk, walked the walk, and allowed his mind to be centered on service to others, and living by this scriptural verse: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant.” (Philippians 2: 5-7). John Lewis was such a man!

We have known earthly saints such as many of our own fathers, mothers and grandparents. Lewis was an individual on the spiritual-order of many of our forefathers (ancestors),

because he was a spiritual example of his own teachings. For what greater love can a man have for others than the spiritual-moralcourage to place his own life on the front-line of brutal injustice fighting for freedom for others, and willing to suffer the dire consequences? What a Saint! Good soldiers are not afraid to suffer for the sake of righteousness. John Lewis was such a leader.

What a Saint! There are those who spiritually profess to know God, but deny God in their life’s work, and they do not promote spiritual health in themselves or others. Lewis was a fighter for justice/freedom because he was grounded in Biblical Truths and was not swayed by the corrupt political powers of this world. What a Saint! Lewis was not a carbon copy, because he walked in the light of God, and: “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.” There are servant-leaders and self-serving-leaders. Lewis knew that: “the battle is not yours, but God’s.” Because: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that he also reap.” Lewis understood this spiritual principle, because his life was a living spiritual testimonial example. Therefore, well done, Congressman John Lewis, a good and faithful servant, you kept the Faith, fought the good fight, and now God has your eternal spiritual reward. Rest in peace, and as Congressman Elijah Cummings once said: dance with the Angels. Know this, America: God Is In Control, because: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.”

(Psalm 24:1). Selah!

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John Lewis, cont’d the fierceness of now.”

Former President Barack Obama, who honored Lewis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, expressed his love and admiration of Lewis.

“I first met John when I was in law school, and I told him then that he was one of my heroes. Years later, when I was elected a U.S. Senator, I told him that I stood on his shoulders. When I was elected President of the United States, I hugged him on the inauguration stand before I was sworn in and told him I was only there because of the sacrifices he made. And through all those years, he never stopped providing wisdom and encouragement to me and Michelle and our family. We will miss him dearly,” Obama wrote.

As noted on CNN, Lewis, a Democrat who served as the US representative for Georgia’s 5th Congressional District for more than three decades, was widely

seen as a moral conscience of Congress because of his decades-long embodiment of nonviolent fight for civil rights. His passionate oratory was backed by a long record of action that included, by his count, more than 40 arrests while demonstrating against racial and social injustice.

A follower and colleague of Martin Luther King Jr., he participated in lunch counter sit-ins, joined the Freedom Riders in challenging segregated buses and — at the age of 23 — was a keynote speaker at the historic 1963 March on Washington.

“We do not want our freedom gradual; we want to be free now,” he said at the time.

At age 25, Lewis helped lead a march for voting rights on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where he and other marchers were met by heavily armed state and local police who attacked them with clubs, fracturing Lewis’ skull. Images from that “Bloody Sunday” shocked the nation and galvanized support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

“I gave a little blood on that bridge,” he said years later. “I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death.”

Despite the attack and other beatings, Lewis never lost his activist spirit, taking it from protests to politics. He was elected to the Atlanta city council in 1981, then to Congress six years later.

Once in Washington, he focused on fighting against poverty and helping younger generations by improving education and health care.

He also co-wrote a series of graphic novels about the civil rights movement, which won him a National Book Award.

Born to sharecroppers on a Troy, Alabama, cotton farm into a segregated America on February 21, 1940, Lewis lived to see an African American elected president, a moment he said he never thought would come

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despite his decades long fight for equality.

He described attending President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration as an “out-of-body” experience.

“When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought — I never dreamed — of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected president of the United States,” he said at the time.

In 2011, after more than 50 years on the front lines of the civil rights movement, Lewis received the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, placed round his neck by America’s first Black president.

Obama said in a statement following Lewis’ death that the civil rights icon will “continue, even in his passing, to serve as a beacon” in America’s journey towards a more perfect union.

“He loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise.

And through the decades, he not only gave all of himself to the cause of freedom and justice, but inspired generations that followed to try to live up to his example,” Obama said.

Lewis died on the same day as civil rights leader Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian, who was 95. Vivian helped found the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference, and helped organize the first sit-ins in Nashville in 1960 and the first civil rights march in 1961. That same year, Vivian participated in Freedom Rides. He worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. as the national director of affiliates for the SCLC. Two great leaders who will be forever missed.

- AANI

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