John Lewis

FEBRUARY 21, 1940 – JULY 17, 2020

Every Tuesday night for the fall semester of 1959, John Lewis made his way to Clark Memorial United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. There, in the church basement, Rev.

James Lawson mentored a group of Black college students in the philosophy and tactics of nonviolent direct action. “Those Tuesday nights became the focus of my life,” recalled Lewis, who’d since childhood in rural Alabama sought a way to fight white supremacy.

Lewis was raised on a small farm in Troy, Alabama, about fifty miles south of Montgomery. Early on, he grew resentful, not only of the visible signs of Jim Crow, but also of the exploitative economic g