>> Announcer: From the Library
of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Pause ]
>> David Rubenstein: My
name is David Rubenstein
and I have the honor of
introducing John Lewis
and I'll try to be relatively brief.
In my view, the word hero is one
of the most overused words
in the English language.
People often say other people
are heroes when in fact,
they probably really aren't.
But that word is appropriately
used for John Lewis,
perhaps more so than
anybody in our country today
because his life has been
one of complete heroism.
[ Applause ]
A hundred and fifty
years ago yesterday,
Abraham Lincoln signed the
Preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation, a hundred and
fifty years ago yesterday.
He actually issued it on January 1,
1863, but as we know, all it did was
to free some slaves in the south.
Later the Thirteenth
Amendment were necessary --
it was necessary to end slavery
but the Thirteenth Amendment
and the Fourteenth Amendment
and the Fifteenth Amendment
didn't solve the problem.
The Jim Crow Laws that rose in the
south really led to a segregation
that this country should be
ashamed of and was ashamed of.
Not until the 1950s and 1960s
was a lot done by it -- about it.
One of the people who led the effort
to get rid of the Jim Crow Laws
and to make sure that
our vision of making sure
that all humans are created
equal and are treated equally
in our country, that
occurred with the efforts
of people like John Lewis.
John Lewis was a young organizer
for the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee
and when he did so, he was
working in the interstate --
working in the South to make sure
that the interstate bus
terminals were desegregated.
He was arrested twenty-four times
in the course of that effort,
beaten savagely many times.
He became a leader of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
and was brought to Washington to
help lead the march on Washington
on this mall in November of 1963.
He was one of the six Civil
Rights Speakers that gave a speech
that day, by far the youngest.
After that speech and the other
things that happened subsequent
to that, the Civil Rights
Act of '64 was passed
but that wasn't adequate either
and John Lewis began the effort
once again to develop voting rights
for all Americans and he marched
in Selma and was savagely beaten
and his head was fractured as
he tried to move peacefully
across the bridge in Selma.
But from that time on, he
became clearly the symbol
of Civil Rights nonviolent activity
in the United States and because
of that activity that
John Lewis stood for,
the Congress ultimately
made changes in the law
and ultimately we've
moved towards society
where equal treatment is much more
readily the case than it was before.
Since John Lewis left the
Civil Rights Movement actively,
he became a member of Congress
and has been a member of Congress
for twenty-five years and
has been viewed by many
as the conscience of Congress.
He now is the senior member
of the Georgia Delegation.
He has written an autobiography
before about his times
as the Civil Rights Leader.
He's written a new book that
I think everybody will enjoy
and it's my pleasure to introduce
one of our great national heroes
and Civil Rights Leaders,
John Lewis.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you so much.
David, thank you for those
kind words of introduction.
Mr. Librarian, thank
you for your leadership.
Thank you for your vision.
Thank you for never, ever
giving up or never giving in.
Thank you for keeping the faith.
I'm so delighted and so pleased
to be here this afternoon
to see each and every one of you.
Now you heard that I didn't grow
up in a big city like Washington,
D.C. or Baltimore or Silver Springs
or Rockville, Alexander or Atlanta.
I grew up on a farm in rule Alabama
about fifty-miles from Montgomery,
outside of a little
place called Troy.
My father was a sharecropper,
a tenant farmer.
But back in 1944, when I
was only four years old,
my father had saved
three hundred dollars
and with the three hundred dollars,
he bought a hundred
and ten-acres of land.
And on this farm there is
a lot of cotton and corn,
peanuts, hogs, cows and chickens.
On the farm it was my responsibility
to care for the chickens and I fell
in love with raising chickens like
no one else could raise chickens.
Now, do any of you know
anything about raising chickens?
Can I see the hands of those who
knows something about raising --
okay, well let's have a little
fun here this afternoon.
[laughter] Well, as a little boy
when the setting hen was set,
had to mark the fresh egg
with a pencil and place them
under the setting hen and
wait for three long weeks
for the little chicks to hatch.
Some of you may be
saying now John Lewis,
why do you mark those
fresh eggs with a pencil
and placed them under
the setting hen?
Well, from time to time, another
hen will get on that same nest
and there would be some more
eggs and you had to be able
to tell the fresh eggs from the eggs
that were already under
the setting hens.
Do you follow me?
You don't follow me.
That's okay.
[laughter] It's all right.
When these little chicks
would hatch,
I would take these little chicks
and put them in a box with a lantern
and raise them on their own or
just give them to another hen
and get some more fresh eggs
and mark them with a pencil
and place them under the setting hen
and the current setting hen is still
in the nest for another three weeks.
When I looked back on it, it
was not the right thing to do.
It was not the moral thing to
do, the most loving thing to do
or the most nonviolent
thing to do to keep
on cheating on the setting hens.
Now some of you may be old enough to
remember, especially in the Midwest
and in the south, we used to
get a Sears and Roebuck catalog?
Any of you old enough to remember
the Sears and Roebuck catalog?
Really? Let me see
the hands of those.
That's very good.
That big book, that thick
book, that heavy book.
Some people called
it the ordering book.
Others called it the wish book.
I wish I had this.
I wish I had that.
But I just kept on wishing.
I was never quite able
to save $18.98
to order the most inexpensive
hatcher incubator from the Sears
and Roebuck store so we just kept
on cheating on the setting hens
and fooling these setting hens.
As a little child about
eight or nine years old,
I wanted to be a minister.
I wanted to preach the gospel.
So from time to time with the
help of my brothers and sisters
and my first cousins
we would gather all
of those chickens together
in the chicken yard.
[laughter] Like you were
here under this large tent
and we would have church.
[laughter] My brothers and sisters
and first cousins would
line the outside of the yard
but they help make up the audience
and the congregation
along with the chickens.
And I would start speaking or
preaching and when I looked back
on it, some of those chickens
would bow their heads.
[laughter] Some of those
chickens would shake their heads.
[laughter] They never
quite said amen.
[laughter] But I'm convinced
that some of those chickens
that I preached to in the
40s and 50s tended to listen
to me much better than some
of my colleagues listen
to me today in the Congress.
[ Laughter and applause ]
As a matter of fact, some of those
chickens were just a little bit
more productive.
[laughter] At least -- at least
-- at least they produce eggs.
Well that's enough about that story.
But one thing those chickens
did is they taught me patience.
They taught me to wait
and not get in a hurry.
Just wait.
Be patient that the eggs would not
hatch in one or two or three days
but they were going to take three
long weeks for those eggs to hatch.
The Civil Rights Movement
taught me patience.
To never give up, never to give in.
To never give out but to always
keep your eyes on the prize.
So this is a book, "Across That
Bridge", is about patience,
about study, hope, truth,
love, and reconciliation.
Now, when I was growing
up there in rural Alabama,
and we lived in the little town
of Troy, lived in Montgomery,
lived in Tuskegee and later as a
student in Nashville, Tennessee
and later living in Atlanta, I saw
those signs that said white men,
color men, white women, color
women, white waiting, color waiting;
but as a little child, I would
ask my mother, my father,
my grandparents and
great grandparents why?
And they would say,
that's the way it is.
Don't get in the way.
Don't get in trouble.
But in 1955 at the age of fifteen,
I heard of Rosa Parks.
I heard of Martin Luther
King, Jr. In 1957 at the age
of seventeen, I met Rosa Parks.
The next year, in 1958,
at the age of eighteen,
I met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The action of Rosa Parks the people
in Montgomery and the teaching and
leadership of Dr. King inspired me
to get in the way,
to get in trouble.
So more than fifty years
I've been getting in trouble,
good trouble, necessary trouble.
[applause]
So "Across That Bridge" is really
a lesson about getting in trouble.
Good trouble and that's what I think
in America today we need more
people to get in trouble.
Good trouble.
[applause]
If you believe in something that
is so right, so dear, so necessary,
you have to get in trouble; but
before we got in any trouble
as students as young
people, we studied.
We just didn't wake up one morning
and say we're going
to go and sit in.
We didn't just dream one
day that we were going go --
come to Washington and go on that
Freedom Ride or that we were going
to march on Washington as we did in
1963, that we were going to march
from Selma to Montgomery
as we did in 1965.
We studied.
We prepared ourselves as college
students, as high school students
in the city of Nashville.
Every Tuesday night my entire school
year, a group of us would meet
at 6:30 p.m. We studied what Gandhi
attempted to do in South Africa.
What he accomplished in India.
We studied the role
of civil disobedience.
We studied the great
religions of the world.
We study what Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was all about.
And we were ready.
And we would be sitting in or
standing in at a theater or going
on a Freedom Ride and
we would be beaten.
We would be jailed.
But we didn't strike back
because many of us grew
to accept non-violence as a way
of living, as a way of life.
That it's better to
love than to hate.
We wanted to build
a beloved community.
We wanted to be reconciled.
So this book is also
about reconciliation.
To give you one example.
I first came to Washington,
D.C. May 1st, 1961,
to go on something
called a Freedom Ride.
Eighteen of us.
Seven whites and six
African Americans.
We came here on May 1st.
We studied.
We participated in
nonviolent workshops.
And I will never forget it on
the night of May 3rd some place
in downtown Washington, we
went to a Chinese restaurant.
Now, growing up in rural Alabama,
going to school in Nashville,
I never been to a Chinese
restaurant before.
Never had a meal at
a Chinese restaurant.
But that night, we
had a wonderful meal.
The food was good and someone
said, you should eat well
because this may be
like the last supper.
The next day on May 4th, 1961, we
left Washington traveling from here
on our way to New Orleans.
The first incident occurred
in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Back in 1961, black people and white
people couldn't be seated together
on a Greyhound Bus
or a Trailway Bus.
Couldn't share the same waiting
room, the same restroom facilities.
Segregation was the
order of the day.
But in Charlotte, North
Carolina in May of 1961,
a young African American man entered
a so-called white waiting room.
He went into the waiting room
and later entered a barbershop
and tried to get a shoeshine.
He was arrested and taken to jail.
The next day he went to trial
and the jury dismissed
the charges against him.
On that same afternoon, my
seatmate, a young white gentlemen,
by the name of Albert Bigelow.
Wonderful man, from
Cos Cob, Connecticut.
The two of us tried to enter a
so-called white waiting room.
We were met by a group
of young men who beat us
and left us lying in
a pool of blood.
The local authorities
came up and wanted
to know whether we
wanted to press charges.
We said no.
We believe in peace and
love and non-violence.
That was May 9, 1961.
In February '09, less than a month
after President Barrack Obama had
been inaugurated as President,
one of the young men
that had attacked us came
to my Congressional Office here on
Capitol Hill and said, "Mr. Lewis,
I'm one of the people that beat you.
Will you forgive me?
I want to apologize."
His son had been encouraging
his father to go out and seek
out the people that he had attacked.
I said, "Yes.
I accept your apology.
I forgive you."
His son started crying.
He started crying.
I started crying.
He gave me a hug.
I hugged him back.
Since then I've seen this
gentlemen three other times.
He called me brother and
I called him brother.
That's what the movement
was all about.
To be reconciled.
[applause] So this book
is about reconciliation.
[applause] It is saying in the final
analysis that we are one people,
that we are one family,
that we are one house.
That we must be reconciled.
That those of us who live here
in America, those of us who live
on this little piece of real
estate must learn to live together
as brothers and sisters
or we will perish
as fools as Dr. King suggested.
The late A. Phillip
Randolph who was the Dean
of the Civil Rights Movement,
a Dean of Black Leadership,
who had the whole idea
about the march
on Washington almost fifty
years ago, once said,
"From time to time maybe,
maybe our four mothers
and our four fathers all came to
this great land in different ships
but we're all in the same boat now.
So in the final analysis, it doesn't
matter whether we're Black or White,
Latino, Asian American,
or Native American.
It doesn't matter whether
we're Democrats or Republican.
It doesn't matter.
Whether we are straight or gay.
It doesn't matter whether
we are Jewish or Muslim
or Christians, we're one people.
We're one family.
We're one house.
That's what the struggle
has been about.
[ Applause ]
This little book, "Across That
Bridge", is saying in effect
that our struggle is not a struggle
to redeem the soul of America.
It's not a struggle that lasts
for one day, one week, one month,
one year or one lifetime.
Maybe it would take
more than one lifetime
to create a more perfect union.
To create the beloved community.
A community at peace with itself.
Now, you heard David tell you that
I did get arrested a few times
and young people, young children
come up and say, how can you be
in the Congress, you got arrested?
[laughter] You violated the laws
and I would say, they were bad laws.
Never customs, never tradition and
we wanted America to be better.
We wanted America to live up to
the Declaration of Independence,
live up to our creed,
make real our democracy.
Take it off of paper
and make it real.
So when I got arrested
the first time,
this book is saying
that I felt free.
I felt liberated and today,
more than ever before,
I feel free and liberated.
You know, Abraham Lincoln, a hundred
and fifty years ago freed the slaves
but it took the modern
day Civil Rights Movement
to free and liberate a nation.
[ Applause ]
Now, I know some of you are asking
where did you get the
name "Across That Bridge?"
Where'd you get that title from?
Life lessons and a
vision for change.
Just think a few short years ago
since this is an election year,
hundreds and thousands and millions
of people in the American South,
eleven states to the
whole confederacy,
from Virginia to Texas, could
not register to vote simply
because of the color of their skin.
People stood in lines.
You take a state like a state of
Mississippi, in 1963, 1964, 1965,
had a black voting population
of more than four hundred
and fifty thousand, but only
about sixteen thousand
were registered to vote.
There was one county in my
native state of Alabama,
Lounge County in the
heart of the black belt,
black population was
more than eighty percent
but there was not a single
registered black voter
in the county.
In a little town of Selma,
Alabama, only two point one percent
of blacks could vote and
were registered to vote.
People were beaten.
People were jailed.
People were asked to pass
a so-called literacy test.
On one occasion a man was
asked to count the number
of bubbles on a bar of soap.
On another occasion a man was asked
to count the number of
jellybeans in a jar.
There were African American
lawyers, teachers and doctors,
college professors failing
the so-called literacy test.
Had to pay a poll tax and
we had to change that.
Hundreds and hundreds of people
had been arrested and jailed.
In 1964, my old organization the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, better known as SNCC,
organized something called the
Mississippi Summer Project.
[applause] Thank you.
Some of you remember.
For more than a thousand
students black
and white college students
came south and worked.
The summer night of June 21st,
1964, three young men that I knew,
two young white men, Andy
Goodman, Mickey Schwerner
and one young African
American man, James Chaney,
went out to investigate the burning
of an African American church.
They were stopped, arrested,
taken to jail and later
that same evening they were taken
from jail turned over to the Klan
where they were beaten,
shot and killed.
Now I tell young people all the time
that these three young
men didn't die in Vietnam.
They didn't die in the Middle East.
They didn't die in Eastern Europe.
They didn't die in Africa
or Central or South America.
They died right here in our
own country trying to get all
of our people to become participants
in the democratic process.
And right now, there is an attempt
on the part of seven members
of the Congress both
Democrats and Republicans
to get the Postal Service
to issue a stamp in honor
of these three young men.
[ Applause ]
So we had to organize.
We had to mobilize.
We had to speak up.
We had to speak out.
We had to get in trouble, good
trouble, necessary trouble.
After Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
had received the Noble Peace Prize
in December 1964 after President
Johnson has signed a Civil Rights
Act in July 1964, Dr. King had
a meeting with the President,
when he returned from Europe
and told him we needed
a voting right sight.
And President Lyndon Johnson
told Dr. King in so many words,
"We don't have the
votes in the Congress
to get a voting right sight passed.
I just signed the Civil Rights Act."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came
back to Atlanta; he met with a group
of us and said we were
right that day.
My organize SNCC was
already involved in Selma.
In Selma, the heart
of the black belt,
the only time a person could
even attempt to register
to vote were the first and
third Mondays of each month.
You had to go up a set of steps
through a set of double doors
and get a copy of the
so called literacy test
and very few people were able to
pass that so called literacy test.
Few days late, February 1963 --
1965, there was a protest in Marion,
Alabama, about thirty-five
miles from Selma.
Marion, Alabama is the hometown
of Mrs. Martin Luther King,
Jr. An incident occurred.
A young man by the name
of Jimmy Lee Jackson,
tried to protect his mother.
He was shot in the
stomach by a state trooper
and a few days later he died
at a local hospital in Selma.
At the cost of what happened
to him, we decided to march
from Selma to Montgomery.
So on Sunday March 7, 1965,
about this time of day,
six hundred of us had participated
in a nonviolent workshop.
We'd line up in twos to walk that
fifty miles from Selma to Montgomery
to dramatize to the nation and
to the world that people of color
in Alabama and throughout the
south wanted to register to vote.
During those times, during
those days I had all of my hair
and a few pounds lighter.
[laughter] I was wearing a backpack
before they became fashionable
to wear backpacks.
And in this backpack
I had two books.
I thought I'm a guna be arrested.
I'm a guna go to jail so I
wanted to have something to read.
I had an apple and I had an orange.
One apple and one orange.
I wanted to have something to eat.
I had toothpaste and toothbrush.
Thought I was going to be
in jail with my friends,
my colleagues and neighbors.
I wanted to be able
to brush my teeth.
As we were crossing
the Alabama River,
my colleague walking beside
me, a young man by the name
of Jose Williams said to
me, "John, can you swim?"
He saw all of this water down below.
I said, "No Jose."
I said, "Can you swim?"
He said, "Yes, a little."
We continued to walk.
We came to the highest point
on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Down below we saw a sea of
blue Alabama State Troopers.
We continued to walk.
We came within hearing distance
of the state troopers and a member
of the state troopers
identified himself and said,
"I'm Major John Claude of
the Alabama State Troopers.
This is an unlawful march and
will not be allowed to continue.
I give you three minutes to
disburse and return to your church."
And Jose Williams said, "Major,
give us a moment to kneel and pray."
And before we can tell the people
back behind us or send word to kneel
and pray, the trooper
said, "Officers advance.
Troopers advance."
These men put on their gas masks.
They came toward us
beating us with nightsticks.
Trampling us with horses
and releasing the teargas.
I was hit in the head with a
state trooper with a nightstick.
Had a concussion at the bridge.
I thought I was going to die.
I thought I saw death.
Forty-seven years later,
I don't recall,
I don't know how I made it
back across that bridge,
but I do remember back in that
little church that we had left from,
the church was full to capacity.
More than two thousand people
on the outside trying to get
in to protest what had
happened on the bridge.
And someone asked me to say
something to the audience
and I stood up and said,
"I don't understand it,
how President Johnson can
send troops to Vietnam
and cannot send troops to
Selma, Alabama to protect people
who only desires to
get registered to vote,
to march from Selma to Montgomery."
Seventeen of us were hurt and
admitted to a local hospital.
The next day Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. came to Selma to visit with us
and he said that he had asked
religious leaders to come
to Selma Tuesday, March 9th, more
than a thousand priests, rabbis,
nuns and ministers came and
walked across that bridge.
Walked across that bridge.
[applause] So we made
a lot of progress
but there's still other
bridges that we need to cross,
to create a more perfect union.
To create the beloved community.
To redeem the soul of America,
but because of that day,
President Lyndon Johnson came to the
Congress on March 15th and made one
of the most meaningful speeches
that any American President had made
in modern time on the whole question
of civil rights or voting rights.
We call it the "We
Shall Overcome" speech.
He started that speech off that
night by saying, "I speak tonight
for the dignity of man and
for the destiny of democracy."
He went on to say; at time history
and fate meet in a single place
in man unending search for freedom.
So it was more than a century
ago in Lexington and Concord.
So it was at Appomattox.
So it was last week
in Selma, Alabama.
He condemned the violence in Selma,
introduced the Voting Rights Act
and before he concluded that speech
he said, "And we shall overcome."
I looked at Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. We were watching Lyndon Johnson
and listening to him together in
a home of a local family in Selma.
I looked at Dr. King and he started
crying and we all started crying.
To hear the President of the
United States using the theme song
of the Civil Rights Movement,
and we shall overcome.
There are other Bridges to cross.
We must cross them with faith, hope,
love, and peace and be reconciled
with our brothers and sisters
because we are one family.
We are one house.
We all live in the same house.
The American house, the world house
and continue to cross that bridge.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
It's my understanding
that we have some time
for a few minutes of questions.
I believe that mics in the --
[ Pause ]
Yes, sir.
>> Audience Member: Hi.
Congressman Lewis.
I enjoyed your remarks.
What to you is on the
unfinished agenda?
What still needs to be done to
finally solve some of the problems?
One of my concerns is seems the
national neglect of the problem
of the inner cities and the
ghettos and the racial isolation
and the concentrations of poverty
that nobody seems to talk about.
What do you think should be done
in that area and other parts
of the national agenda to deal
with the remaining issues?
>> John Lewis: Well, I think
it's important for all of us,
not just the government,
but organizations
or the educational institutions,
the business community,
people in government to create what
I call a coalition of conscience,
similar to the coalition
that we had during the '60s,
and pull and work together.
There's too many people that have
been left out and left behind.
They're not only in the inner city
but on farms and rural America.
There's just too many human
beings in this country,
the wealthiest country in the world
that are living in a sea of poverty.
That's not right.
That's not fair and that's not just.
If we fail to do something about
it, history would not be kind to us.
[ Applause ]
Yes, ma'am.
>> Audience Member: Yes, sir.
We passed each other on a
plane coming out of Atlanta.
I looked at you, you looked
at me, I said thank you
but I never had an opportunity
to say thank you for what.
My life was bookmarked between the
two meetings that changed your life.
Had you not stood where
you stood on that bridge,
had you not made the choices
that you made, my life
and so many other lives would
have been so much different.
1975 when I graduated from high
school, I was encouraged to go
to college, major in home economics
because there was a shortage
of domestics in West Chester County.
I had a choice because
of the choice you made.
I went on to Tuskegee graduated.
Became an officer in the Air Force.
A lawyer, a writer.
I wrote about you in the Civil
Rights Movement and today I work
for the Department
of Veteran Affairs.
I've worked as a policy analyst
for homeless veterans as well
as performing military outreach
and it would not have been possible
had you not opened the doors
you opened.
So thank you so very much.
[applause]
>> John Lewis: Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
Yes, ma'am.
>> Audience Member: Represent -- oh.
Representative Lewis.
Thank you for your
words this afternoon.
One of Martin Luther King,
Jr.'s unfinished business items
was pursuing economic justice.
What would you advise
for young people today
to pursue economic justice
in today's world given all the
obstacles that are out there,
many young college students
who are graduating without jobs
and the growing and vast
inequality that persists in America,
what can young people do to pick
up that unfinished agenda
item and see it through?
>> John Lewis: Well the
most important thing
that young people can do right now,
at this moment, at this junction
and not just young people, all
of us, get involved, be engaged
and during this election year,
vote, [applause] vote, vote.
[applause] I said it so many times
and I'm not saying I'm glad I didn't
vote for this person or that person,
but the vote is precious.
It is almost sacred.
It is the most non-- - most
non-violent tool that we have
in a democratic society
and we have to use it.
Use it. And use it for good.
It controls everything that we
do in a society such as ours.
From the time that we are born
and to the time that we die.
And then I will say that we should
encourage all of our children,
all of our young people to receive
the best possible education.
Education is still
the great equalizer.
When I was growing
up in rural Alabama,
long before I crossed the bridge
in Selma, as a young child,
we had very few books
and I love books.
My wife is a librarian.
[laughter and applause]
But we had old radio.
Much later we got a television
but that was much later.
I was off to college
before we got a television.
But I tell you, you can
travel, you can learn
and I had a wonderful teacher
in the elementary school,
who said read my child.
Read my child.
And I tried to read everything.
We didn't even have a
subscription to the local newspaper
but my grandfather had one.
And when he was finished
reading his newspaper each day,
we would get that newspaper
and read it.
So I kept up with the drama
going on in Montgomery.
I kept up and followed up in
what was happening in Little Rock
in 1957 at the age of seventeen.
So this day and age,
young people can travel.
We didn't have a website.
I hadn't heard of the Internet
and today you talk about iPad
and iPod and cellar telephone.
We didn't have any of that.
My generation.
But we used what we had to bring
about a nonviolent revolution
and we got to encourage
young people to use the tools
and instruments they had, all of
us, to do good and not let any
of our brothers and sisters or any
group they left out or left behind.
>> Audience Member: Hi.
I'm an undergraduate
at American University
and I'm currently taking a
course called oral history
of the Civil Rights Movement
with professor Julian Bond
and I've just been so inspired by
all the studying that we've done
and the incredible actions that you
and so many other people took
turns the Civil Rights Movement
but we've also done a lot of
discussion amongst my classmates
About what we consider
is our lacking education
in Civil Rights Movement history
while we were in public school,
private school, anything
like that so I was wondering,
if you think there's any
work left to be done.
We're sort of documenting
the incredible things
that happened during that time
and educating today's youth
about the struggles
that America went
through during that time period?
>> John Lewis: Well, I think it's
important for all of our schools,
elementary, middle school
but even kindergarten level,
really to teach young people about
what happened and how it happened.
There are a group of
students that come
from California and other states
to see me from time
to time in Atlanta.
There's one American
history high school teacher,
something called sojourn
and they bring groups
of one hundred high
school students to Atlanta.
Then they go to Tuskegee,
to Montgomery, to Selma,
to Birmingham to Jackson,
to Little Rock,
to Memphis and then they return.
And since 1999, they brought
more than six thousand in groups
of one hundred and I've spoken to
every single group except for one.
As a matter of fact, the one
group, I spoke to them in Atlanta,
then I surprised them with
their teacher and walked
across the bridge with them.
I showed up and walked
across that bridge with them.
[applause] So it is important.
A few weeks ago, a few months ago
now, I should say, I was traveling
and speaking to high school students
in Germany and I was so impressed.
I was so moved so inspired
that many of the young people
in the high schools and towns
and cities in Germany knew more
about the Civil Rights Movement than
a lot of young people in America.
We cannot let that happen.
We've got to really be informed
and people should go on a trip.
One thing I've been doing
for the past twelve years
with a group called Faith
and Politics, taking members
of Congress, Democrats,
Republicans, Conservatives,
Liberals to Birmingham, to
Montgomery, and to Selma,
to walk across that bridge.
And several members have told me
and one senator who's not the most
liberal said to me, he said, "John,
if I had been on this trip earlier,
my voting record would
be different."
So when people study and
visit and get a feeling,
I think it helps educate us
all and sensitize us all.
Maybe one more question?
Yes.
>> Audience Member: Hi.
We're both undergraduates
at Marymount University studying
African American culture.
And obviously you've made
great changes in our nation.
What we were wondering is even
with the laws in place at the time
that did change our nation, how
long did it take for the people
to actually get used to it and
starting to accept the changes?
>> John Lewis: Well many,
many places when the laws --
when Congress passed the
laws and the President
of the United States signed the
law, people made the adjustment
and I think all, all across --
to me it's unbelievable the
attitudes of a lot of people.
When I go back to the little
place where I grew up.
When I was growing up I wanted to
attend Troy -- we called Troy State.
It's now Troy University
only ten miles from my home.
Submitted my application,
my high school transcript.
I never heard a word
from the school.
After I got elected to Congress,
[ Laughter ]
they had John Lewis Day in the
little town and the local banker
and the local Coca-Cola bottling
company sponsored a parade
through the little town and the
President of the university came
up to me and said, "Congressman
Lewis, we understand you wanted
to attend Troy years ago.
Why don't you come back and we'll
give you an honorary degree."
Troy University band led
the parade through the town.
So anyway, I went back
for commencement
and I have an honorary
degree from the school today
and they invite me back from
time to time to speak and I joke
with the students and I tell them,
I got my education from
Troy, the easy way.
[laughter] And to give you another
example, when I was growing up,
outside of Troy, when I was
only about sixteen years old,
with some of my brothers
and sisters and cousins,
we went down to the library to try
to get a library card and I was told
that the library was for
whites only and not for colors.
So I never went back there.
I never went back to the Pike County
Public Library in Troy Alabama
and July 5, 1998 for a book signing
of my book "Walking With the Wind"
and hundreds of blacks and
white citizens showed up.
We had food, wonderful program
and at end of the program,
they gave me a library card.
[laughter] So it says something
about the distance we've come
and the progress we've made
as a people in America.
[applause] Thank you.
>> Announcer: This has
been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.