>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC.
[silence]
>> KAREN JAFFE: I'm Karen Jaffe,
head of the Young Readers Center
at the Library of Congress.
I'd like to welcome today
the School Without Walls,
at Francis Stevens' seventh grade.
If you're seventh graders,
raise your hand.
Okay. Glad to see you.
Thank you, Clay.
I'd like to also welcome our special
partner, Everybody Wins D.C.,
and their very special supporter,
Target stores, who is making a copy
of the book you're going to
hear about today, March Two,
available to you, each and every
one of you, when you leave.
Thank Target for that,
and Everybody Wins D.C..
We also, of course, want to
mention and thank our special guest,
Congressman John Lewis, and Andrew
Aydin, his co-author of March Two.
They both have very busy schedules
at the U.S. House of
Representatives.
Congressman Lewis represents
the fifth district of Georgia.
Today is really an historic
day for all of us in this room,
because you have had a chance
to see, and I think some of you
for a second time, the Library
of Congress Civil Rights Exhibit.
John Lewis is clearly one of
the most courageous persons
of the Civil Rights Movement,
that this movement ever produced
and we're very honored
to have him with us.
So, I'm just going to give
you a brief, very short bio
because you're really going to be
hearing from him about his life,
but I'll just put a
few things in context.
John Lewis grew up on his
family's farm in Alabama,
attended segregated public schools.
As a young boy, he was inspired
by the Montgomery Bus Boycott,
and knew he wanted to be part
of the Civil Rights Movement.
As a student first at Troy
University, and then when he went
to Fisk University,
he organized sit-ins.
He participated in the
Freedom Rides, and was chairman
of the Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee,
called SNCC, which
he helped to form.
He also graduated from the American
Baptist Theological Seminary.
At 23, he was an architect
and keynote speaker
at the historic March on
Washington in August of 1963.
He and Hosea Williams led
the 600 peaceful protesters
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge
in Selma, Alabama in March, 1965,
but the marchers were
attacked by state troopers,
and the infamous confrontation
became known as Bloody Sunday.
In 1977, President Jimmy
Carter appointed him
to direct the 250,000 members
of the federal volunteer
agency called Action.
In 1981, he was elected to
the Atlanta City Council,
and in 1986 was elected to U.S.
Congress, where he still serves.
Congressman Lewis has won too many
awards and honors to list them all,
but it would be worth noting that
President Barack Obama presented him
with the Medal of Freedom,
the highest civilian
honor in our country.
Allow me to introduce Congressman
John Lewis and Andrew Aydin.
[applause]
>> JOHN LEWIS: Good morning.
>> AUDIENCE: Good morning.
>> JOHN LEWIS: You're
a beautiful group.
You're handsome.
You look good.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.
>> JOHN LEWIS: You look very good.
>> AUDIENCE: Thanks.
>> JOHN LEWIS: And I
know you're very smart.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.
>> JOHN LEWIS: Now, I remember
many, many years ago, when I had all
of my hair, and a few
pounds lighter,
when I was in elementary school,
middle school, high school.
But, long before then,
I remember growing
up on a farm, in the rural Alabama.
My father had been a
sharecropper, a tenant farmer,
living on another person's land.
But, in 1944, when I
was four years old,
and I do remember when I was four.
How many of you remember
when you were four?
What happened to the rest of us?
Do you remember?
Do you remember?
>> AUDIENCE: Yes.
>> JOHN LEWIS: Okay, good.
Well, my father had saved $300,
and a man sold him 110
acres of land for $300.
That's a lot of land for $300.
And on this farm, we raised a
lot of cotton and corn, peanuts,
horse, cows, and chickens.
Andrew, this young man here,
I've been his Congressperson
since he was three years old?
Or four, Andrew?
>> ANDREW AUDIN: Three.
>> JOHN LEWIS: Three.
He would tell you the story
that when I was a little boy,
growing up on that farm,
it was my responsibility
to care for the chickens.
When you read March Book One
and Book Two, you know I fell
in love raising chickens.
Any of you know what they
say about raising chickens?
Any of you?
I know some of you like
to eat chicken, right?
>> AUDIENCE: Yes.
>> JOHN LEWIS: What,
do you like Popeye's?
>> AUDIENCE: Yes.
>> JOHN LEWIS: Or Kentucky Fried?
>> AUDIENCE: Yes.
>> JOHN LEWIS: Or [inaudible]?
>> AUDIENCE: Yes.
>> JOHN LEWIS: Okay,
and others, right?
But you don't know anything
about raising chickens.
Well, let me tell you what I had
to do as a young boy, growing up.
When I was seven, eight,
nine years old,
I fell in love with
raising chickens.
When a setting hen was sat,
I had to take the fresh eggs,
mark them with a pencil, place
them under the setting hen and wait
for the three long weeks for
the little chicks to hatch.
>> I know some of you are
saying now, "John Lewis,
why did you mark the fresh egg
with a pencil before you place
them under the setting hen?"
Well, from time to time, another
hen would get on that same nest,
and there would be more fresh eggs,
so you had to tell the fresh eggs
from the eggs that were
already under the setting hen.
You follow me?
Do you really follow me?
>> AUDIENCE: Yeah.
>> JOHN LEWIS: It's okay if you
don't follow me, it's all right.
When these little chicks
were hatched,
I would fool these setting hens.
I would cheat on these setting hens.
When I look back on it, it
was not the right thing to do.
It was not the good thing to do.
I kept on cheating on
those setting hens.
I would take these little chicks and
put them in a box with a lantern,
raise them on their own,
get some more fresh eggs,
mark them with a pencil, place
them under the setting hen.
I kept doing it over and over again.
As a little boy, about
eight or nine years old,
I wanted to be a minister.
I got all of our chickens
together in the chicken yard,
and together here, in
this beautiful room.
>> And my brothers and sisters
and first cousins were lining
outside around the chicken yard.
Then, I would start
speaking, or preaching.
When I look back on it,
some of these chickens
would bow their heads.
Some of these chickens
would shake their heads.
They never quite sit there now.
These chickens tended listen
to me much better than some
of my colleagues and
friends listen to me today.
Some of the little chickens were
just a little more productive.
>> At least they produced
[inaudible].
I had grown up there.
We would visit the
little town of Troy,
visit Montgomery, about
50 miles away.
Troy about ten miles away.
Visit Tuskegee, about 40 miles away.
I saw those signs that said, "white
men", "colored men", "white women",
"colored women", "white
waiting", "colored waiting".
They would go downtown
on a Saturday afternoon
to the theater, to see a movie.
All of us little black children
had to go upstairs to the balcony.
All of the little white children
were downstairs on the first floor.
I kept on saying to my mother,
my father, my grandparents,
my great-grandparents, "Why?
Why?" They said, "That's
the way it is.
Don't get in the way.
Don't get in trouble."
>> But, 60 years ago today, December
1st, 1955, I heard about Rosa Parks.
For the action of Rosa Parks, and
the words of Martin Luther King,
Jr. inspired me to find
a way to get in the way.
Remember, my folks told
me, "Don't get in the way.
Don't get in trouble."
But, I got in trouble.
I got in what I called
"good trouble".
I didn't like seeing those signs
that said "white" and "colored".
White boys, colored boys, white
girls, colored girls, white men,
colored men, white
women, colored women.
I wanted to do something about it.
>> So, in 1956, when I was 16 years
old, some of my brothers and sisters
and cousins, we went down
to the public library,
trying to get a library card,
trying to check out some books.
We were told by the
librarian that the library was
for whites only, and
not for coloreds.
I never went back to the library
in the little town of Troy
until July 5th, 1998, for a
book signing for my first book.
And hundreds of blacks and
white citizens showed up.
At the end of the program,
they gave me a library card.
>> So, in 1958, before 1958, 7, at
the age of 17, I met Rosa Parks.
Changed my life.
The next year, 1958, at the age of
18, I met Martin Luther King, Jr..
Andrew would tell you, and March
would tell you, these two books,
that Rosa Parks, Dr. King and others
inspired me to find a way to get
in the way, so I got in the way.
Just think, a few short years ago,
black people and white people,
young black students, young
white students, black teachers,
white teachers, black lawyers,
white lawyers, they would be seated
on a bus, a Greyhound bus, leaving
Washington D.C. in May of 1961,
the same year that President
Barack Obama was born.
>> We had to change that.
We were beaten, we were
arrested, we went to jail.
I got arrested a few times.
Beaten, and left bloody.
But Dr. King, Rosa Parks, and
others told us the way of peace,
the way of love, the
way of non-violence.
Andrew would tell you that
I had wonderful teachers
in this poorly staffed,
segregated school.
And I had a teacher who told me over
and over again, "Read,
my child, read."
I tried to read everything.
We were too poor to have a
subscription to the local newspaper.
We couldn't afford it.
My grandfather had one, and each day
when he would finish
reading his newspaper,
he would pass it on to us.
So, I read about Rosa Parks.
I read about Martin Luther King Jr.
>> And so the actions of Rosa
Parks, the words, the leadership
of Dr. King inspired me and
changed my life forever.
If it hadn't been for Rosa
Parks, Martin Luther King Jr.,
and the Civil Rights
Movement of the sixties,
I wouldn't be sitting here today and
talking with you, speaking with you.
So, America has come a distance.
We made a lot of progress, but
we still have a distance to go.
I say to each and every one of you,
continue to read, and never give up.
Never become bitter.
Never hate.
Hate is too heavy a burden to bear.
We were beaten, left bloody, left
unconscious, but I'm not bitter.
We'll never hate.
The will to love is another way.
Andrew? [applause]
>> ANDREW AYDIN: It's
never easy to follow that.
My name is Andrew Aydin,
Congressman's congressional office,
and I'm the co-author of March.
When I was a kid, I
was a huge comic geek.
I was a nerd.
I liked computers.
Truth be told, my father
left when I was about three,
and I was raised by a single mother.
And I started reading comics
because it was a refuge.
It was a place where I could
see stories about justice,
and people doing the right thing,
people motivated by pure intentions,
which, even at that age,
I felt was all too lacking
in our society, right?
How many of you guys read comics?
That's a pretty good number.
You guys ever go to
comic conventions?
You ever been?
>> AUDIENCE: ComicCon?
>> ANDREW AYDIN: Yeah, right?
You know John Lewis
marched at ComicCon?
He cosplayed as himself.
Yeah, he had on his backpack
from Selma, and the trench coat,
and he led a march of
kids through the ComicCon.
It was a really moving moment,
coming at the end of this journey,
because- To put it in another
way, when I was your age,
if I pulled a comic book
out in my classroom,
my teachers would take it away,
because at that point in time,
comics were not seen as literature.
They were not seen as
something that was acceptable.
But, not too long ago,
Congressman Lewis came with me back
to my own high school, to talk
about their experiences
teaching our graphic novels.
I say that as an example
of, change is possible
in a brief period of time.
So, I guess you're probably asking,
at some point why John Lewis
would write a graphic novel?
Well, it started in 2008.
I was serving on the
Congressman's re-election campaign.
And I admitted, as we were talking
about what we were going to do
after the campaign was
over, that I was going to go
to a comic convention, and
everybody laughed at me,
except for one person: John Lewis.
He didn't laugh.
He said there was a comic book
during the Civil Rights Movement,
and it was incredibly influential.
It was called "Martin Luther
King and the Montgomery Story,"
and it was used to inspire some
of the earliest acts
of civil disobedience.
In fact, we later found out, it
was actually edited by Dr. King.
Doesn't that change your perspective
of Dr. King a little bit?
Dr. King, comic book editor?
But it's true, and his edits
that he submitted actually
made it into the final version.
And so, me being me and
loving comics like I do,
I was captivated by this idea.
I was young.
I was 24. I didn't know any better.
I started asking, "John Lewis,
why don't you write a comic book?"
At first he said, "Oh, maybe."
Which, if you ever get a chance
to go into politics or volunteer
or anything, you'll find
that 'maybe' is a really
nice way of saying 'no'.
I couldn't give up on the idea.
I really believed in it.
Finally, after I asked
several more times,
the Congressman said,
"You know what?
Let's do it, but only if
you write it with me."
That moment changed my life.
But, if there's a lesson
for you guys,
it's that if people
are laughing at you,
you're probably doing
something right.
Remember that then people tease you,
or they think your
idea is a little nutty.
It just means you're a little
bit ahead of your time.
Now, for this journey,
working with Congressman Lewis,
it's been pretty incredible.
He's been my Congressman
since I was three years old.
It's not the sort of thing that your
single mom envisions you will grow
up to do.
It's not something many people
would have even thought possible,
coming from where I came from.
My father was a Turkish immigrant.
He was a Muslim, which is kind
of a dirty word these days.
But, I never really knew him, and
my mother took unbelievable action
to make sure that I
had a good education,
to make sure that every time I came
home, there was somebody there,
and to make sure that
when I wanted to learn,
I could always go to the library.
That's why it's so
important to me to be here.
The Library of Congress is this
incredible institution that those
of us who live in Washington are
fortunate to be able to visit.
This is a place with so much
history, so much invested
in every stone that makes it up.
To be in the building, every
time, I always get excited.
So, I'm glad you guys are here.
I'll tell you, there's been some
weird moments on this journey.
Early on, when we were starting
out, and we didn't have a book,
we just had an idea, and I
was working on it at night,
because we have a day job, right?
It's not easy.
I'm going to go on a pilgrimage with
a Congressman where he leads members
of Congress down to Alabama.
He shows them the sites,
he tells them the stories.
I get on the elevator and
there's John Siegenthaler,
which was Robert Kennedy's
aide, and there's Ethel Kennedy,
who was Robert Kennedy's widow.
I couldn't help myself.
I was like, "Excuse me, I just
thought you might want to know.
You all are in a comic book that
I'm working on with John Lewis."
Ethel Kennedy looked up at me
with these big, beautiful eyes,
and she was like, "That's
nice, dear."
You can understand what it meant
to me then when a few years later,
she called me on my
cell phone to tell me
that March Book One was the
first graphic novel ever
to receive the Robert
F. Kennedy Book Award.
Above all that, the most important
thing is John Lewis' story.
He grew up poor, and he
never let that stop him.
He was a little maladjusted.
He was a little weird.
It's okay.
We all are, and if anything, we
all need to explore those parts
of ourselves, because that's what
makes us unique, and in the end,
that's what makes us successful.
I want to point to
a scene in Book Two,
when you get a chance to read it.
It's during the Children's Crusade.
Many of those kids who
participated were your age.
If I'm totally frank, the
status quo, the powers that be,
they're more afraid of
you than you are of them.
You're free.
You have the power to change this
country, to change our society.
It's just a matter of learning the
tools, and having the perseverance
and the commitment
to make it possible.
So, I thank you guys for listening.
It's an honor to be here.
Keep reading comics.
It's great to have
this in the classroom.
[applause]
>> KAREN JAFFE: If you don't mind,
we'd like to give some questions.
>> JOHN LEWIS: Yes.
>> AUDIENCE: My name
is Juneau Hackett.
I'm in the seventh grade.
My question for you was, when
you did the march the first time,
how hard was it when the officers,
when they chased you
back the other way,
they made you get out of the way?
>> JOHN LEWIS: Well, on that day,
March 7, 1965, I'm 25 years old.
Again, I had all my hair,
a few pounds lighter,
and I was wearing a backpack
before it became fashionable
to wear backpacks.
In this backpack, I had two books.
I thought we were going to be
arrested, going to go to jail.
So, I wanted to have
something to read.
I had one apple, and one orange.
I wanted to have something to eat.
Since I thought we were going
to be in jail with my friends,
neighbors, with my colleagues.
I had toothpaste and a toothbrush.
I wanted to be able
to brush my teeth.
We were walking in twos.
No one said a word, walking
beside a young man by the name
of Josea Williams, one
of Dr. King's staff.
We get to the highest
point on the bridge.
We saw the sea of blue,
of Alabama state troopers.
We continue to walk.
We come within hearing
distance of the state troopers.
I really thought we were
being arrested, and jailed.
A man identified himself and
said, "I'm Major John Plough
of the Alabama state troopers.
This is an unlawful march, and
will not be allowed to continue.
I give you three minutes
to disperse.
Return to your homes
or to your church."
And Josea Williams said, "Major,
give us a moment to kneel and pray."
The Major said, "Troopers, advance."
We saw his men putting
on their gas masks.
They came toward us,
beating us with night sticks.
Trampling us with horses.
Releasing the tear gas.
I was hit in the head.
I thought I saw death.
I thought I was going to die.
50 years later, I don't know how
I made it back across that bridge,
through the streets of Selma, come
back to the church we had left from.
The parent of someone
just took me back.
We knew we had to continue, so when
Dr. King and others came and said,
"We're going to march again.
We've got a court order."
President Lyndon Johnson called
out the military to protect us.
We finally made it, two
and a half weeks later,
from Selma to Montgomery.
Hundreds and thousands of
people, from all across America,
more than 25,000 people
came and marched with us.
Black and white, Asian Americans,
Native American, Latinos.
[applause]
>> AUDIENCE: I'm [inaudible],
and if you were getting beaten,
did you regret it, or did
you feel like, "Oh my God,
I'm making history or [inaudible]?
JOHN LEWIS: No, when I was
being beaten, I didn't ...
No one likes pain.
No one wanted to be
suffering, being beaten.
But, I felt it was part of the price
that I had to pay to change things.
Years later and years before, I
was beaten on the Freedom Rides,
in Rock Hill, South Carolina
as we left Washington, D.C..
My seatmate was a young
white gentleman.
When we arrived at the
Greyhound bus station,
there was an attempt to beat us.
They beat us, and left us bloody.
Left us unconscious.
Left us lying in a pool of blood.
Many years later, one of the guys
that beat me and beat my seatmate,
came to my office in the Canon
building right across the street.
Came to my office, he was in his
seventies, with his son in his 40's
and he said, "Mr. Lewis,
I'm one of the people
that beat you and your seatmate."
He said, "Will you forgive me?
I want to apologize."
The son started crying.
He started crying.
I said, "I accept your apology.
I forgive you."
He hugged me.
I hugged him back,
and I started crying.
That is the power of
the way of peace,
the way of love, the
way of non-violence.
Those signs that I saw
in 1961, they are gone.
They will not return.
The only places we would see those
signs today would be in a book.
In a book, in a museum, on a video.
When people tell me nothing has
changed, I feel like saying,
"Come and walk in my shoes.
I'll show you the changes."
[applause]
>> AUDIENCE: I'm [inaudible],
I'm in the seventh grade.
My question is, after you
got arrested multiple times,
what inspired you to
keep protesting?
>> JOHN LEWIS: Andrew, you
may want to tell that story
about me getting arrested and
how many times [inaudible].
>> ANDREW AYDIN: Well,
I think sometimes the historic
record gets muddled as things go on.
One of the things that's
fun about March is
that we get to set things straight.
One of the things we uncovered
that I think took all of us back,
was the realization that during the
first week of the Selma campaign,
John Lewis got arrested
four times in eight days.
You've got to work to be arrested
four times in eight days, to get in
and then get out of jail.
There was some gifted
attorneys who were making sure
that he was able to get out.
No human being, during the movement,
got in the way with such fervor.
I'll let you finish the rest of it,
but to me that's why his
story is so important.
For us, it's easy to
say, "Okay, I tried it.
I did it once.
I did it twice.
I did something."
But to stay that committed,
to fight that hard,
that's something we
all should aspire to.
>> JOHN LEWIS: More than anything
else, I think, I saw something
that I felt in me that
was not right, not fair.
I'm not going to give up.
As long as I could read, I was
going to stand up, speak up
and speak out, and
try to do something.
You get arrested, you go to
jail, and you get beaten.
Some nurse or doctor or group
of people- no one helped us.
When we beaten in Selma,
there was a group
of nuns [inaudible]
that took care of us.
[applause]
>> AUDIENCE: My name is William.
I'm in the sixth grade,
and my question to you is,
what was one of the things
that you had to do ...
What was your role in being
one of the main leaders
in the Civil Rights Movement?
>> JOHN LEWIS: Part of
my responsibility was
to tell the story, just
go out and tell the story.
What was happening,
how it was happening,
and try to inspire people.
We had to conduct what we
called "non-violent workshops".
You teach people not to strike back,
to believe in the way of peace,
in the way of love, non-violence.
Andrew will tell you, we had
what we called "road plan."
You may call it "social drama".
How to protect your body
if you're knocked down.
We'd go to a sit-in.
We had the dos and don'ts
of the sit-in one time.
I was a student in [inaudible].
We'd tell them to look
straight ahead.
Sit up straight.
Obey your leader.
Follow in the teaching of Gandhi,
and Martin Luther King, Jr..
[applause]
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Max,
and I'm a seventh grader.
I would like to know if there
was anyone besides Dr. King
and Rosa Parks who inspired
you when you were younger?
>> JOHN LEWIS: That's a
very good question, Max.
Thank you very much.
I had wonderful, wonderful parents.
Wonderful mother, wonderful father.
Sometimes I would be out and working
in the field, in the hot sun,
picking cotton, pulling corn,
gathering peanuts, and
I would fall behind.
My mother would say, "Boy,
you're falling behind.
You need to catch up."
I would say, "This is hard work.
This is hard work."
She would say, "Hard work
never killed anybody."
I said, "Well, it's
about to kill me."
My mother and my father
taught me the dignity
of work, and not giving up.
Not giving in.
They were persistent.
They didn't like the idea
of me getting involved
in the Civil Rights Movement,
because they were afraid
that something was
going to happen to me.
My mother would say to me, over and
over again, "Don't get in trouble."
As I said earlier, I got in trouble
but it was good trouble,
necessary trouble.
She couldn't even register to vote,
until after the voting
rights was passed.
My uncles, my teachers
couldn't register to vote.
They were told they could not
read and write well enough.
They were lawyers and doctors,
but these people kept fighting.
They didn't give up.
They didn't give in.
They all inspired me.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is David
Smith, and I'm in seventh grade.
Have you ever felt defeated, and
if you have, what inspired you
to keep on going [inaudible]?
>> JOHN LEWIS: Well, it's
a very good question.
Sometimes you're knocked
down, but you have to get up.
Get arrested, go to jail.
On the Freedom Rides,
in May of 1961,
the same year President
Obama was born, in 1961,
when we left Washington, D.C.,
traveled through the
south, we were arrested.
We were jailed.
We were left bloody, not just
in Rock Hill, South Carolina,
but at the Greyhound bus
station in Montgomery was black
and white Freedom Riders, but we
were seated together on a bus,
in a waiting room, trying to
get something to eat together,
at a lunch counter there
in the bus station.
Trying to use the same
restroom facilities.
We made it to Mississippi.
We filled the city jail, the county
jail in Jackson, Mississippi.
Then, more than 400 of us
were arrested and taken
to the state penitentiary.
We stayed there for about 44 days.
But we won, because
President Kennedy
and his brother Robert Kennedy,
the Attorney General, intervened,
and those signs came tumbling down.
They're gone.
You won't see them
in Mississippi today.
We had to continue going, going.
So, I never feel defeated.
I always felt, somehow, we were
going to have a great victory.
[applause]
>> AUDIENCE: My name's Alisa
and I'm in seventh grade.
Throughout all your
challenges in history,
do you think these experiences
made you weaker or stronger?
>> JOHN LEWIS: I think what I've
experienced during the past more
than 50 years have made me much
stronger and much more determined.
Sometimes, when I'm even in
the Congress, in a meeting
or on the floor of the
House of Representatives,
I feel like I've passed
this way once before.
This is easy, in comparison what
we went through during the sixties.
Sometimes, Andrew, I
guess, has seen harder.
You just can never give up, never
get lost in the sea of despair.
You have to keep your faith and keep
your eyes on the prize, on the goal.
[applause]
>> AUDIENCE: My name
is Maggie [inaudible],
and I'm in seventh grade.
Did your parents support you in
what you wanted to do, and if not,
did that make you work harder in it?
>> JOHN LEWIS: In the very,
very beginning, my mother,
more so than my father were
very troubled that I was going
to get hurt, or something
would happen to me.
She thought we would lose the land,
that our home would
be bombed, or burned.
But, in the end, she became
very, very supportive,
especially after President Johnson
signed the Voting Rights Act,
because she could become
a registered voter.
Her father, my grandfather,
could become a registered voter.
And so she became a crusader
that everybody should
get registered and vote.
[applause]
>> AUDIENCE: Did you ever
take pity on the ones
who discriminate against you?
>> JOHN LEWIS: Did I ever take pity?
On the people who discriminated
against me?
I felt sorry, I guess, in a sense,
and feeling maybe they really
don't understand why they shouldn't
discriminate against someone.
Let's take this room.
This is a store.
This is a store, and everybody
can come in, everybody.
It doesn't matter whether
you're black, white, Latino,
Asian-American, Native American.
Everybody can come in.
You have a restaurant,
you have a lunch counter,
and only white people could
eat at that lunch counter.
How would you feel?
How would you feel if you come
into a store, there's a nice,
shining fountain, saying "white",
and then next to that fountain,
there's a little spigot,
just saying "colored".
If you come and visit
my congressional office
across the street, you
will see a photograph,
a [inaudible] the photograph
in the [inaudible] room,
showing what existed during the
sixties, and fifties, the forties.
That's not right.
That's not fair.
You're invited to come in, but
you're going to be segregated
because of your race, your color.
We have to try to teach people,
and educate people to come
to the point where we are today.
[applause]
>> ANDREW AYDIN: Do you mind
if I just add one part to that?
I think there's an integral
part to what has happened
in our society today stems
from that fundamental conflict.
Let's put it this way.
When John Lewis first sat in,
if they had actually allowed him
to eat, he didn't have a dollar
to pay for that sandwich.
Play that out today.
It's one thing to allow the
integration of facilities.
It's another to ensure that
every human being has the means
to patronize that facility,
to pay for that sandwich.
When you think about
the conflicts today,
think about not only the
integration of the facilities,
but the fundamental right
of every human being to eat,
to be treated equally, to
have those same experiences,
and have the right
to earn those means.
That's all I wanted to say.
[applause]
>> AUDIENCE: How did you feel
about segregated schools
when you attended?
>> JOHN LEWIS: As a young
student, I didn't like it.
First of all, the school was
poorly staffed, overcrowded ...
The black school.
We had the hand-me-down books, with
other people's names in the book.
We rode in broken-down buses.
We passed the nice,
newly built white school.
I didn't like it.
So, when the Supreme Court
decision came down in 1954,
I was 14 years old but I
remember it like it was yesterday.
I thought we would be going to
an integrated school, with black
and white students would be
attending the same school,
but it never happened for me.
I was glad when the
decision came down.
It did [inaudible]
kept pushing in change.
We still have problems today
that we must continue to work on.
We're not there yet.
Dr. King used to speak
about the beloved community,
where we lay down the
burden of race.
We're on our way, but
we're not there.
As young people, as young
students, as you grow up,
you've got to continue to do what
you can, so no one will be left out,
and left behind because
of their race,
their color, their nationality.
[applause]
>> KAREN JAFFE: We want to
thank you so much, both of you.
>> JOHN LEWIS: Thank you.
>> KAREN JAFFE: It was
a wonderful program.
[applause]
>> I'd like to have to
school chaperones and faculty
to help get the students
up in an orderly fashion,
so that we can give you
the books from Target,
and Everybody Wins D.C., okay?
>> JOHN LEWIS: Thank you
so much for having us here.
Thank you so much.
[applause] [background talk]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc dot gov.