John Lewis

Howard Zinn was asked alongside Ella Baker, the famous legendary Ella Baker, to be the adult advisors for SNCC.

And that basically meant they were in the room when the leadership, people like Bob Moses and Diane Nash and soon-to-be Stokely Carmichael to become Kwame Ture, James Foreman, John Lewis, the names are so familiar to us.

They're getting together to try to figure out what to do, and Zinn and Ella Baker are there to offer whatever advice they can.

And it really was because the Spellman women were members and leaders of SNCC that Howard Zinn had this reputation as a middle-aged white guy who brought a lot to the table for a black freedom struggle.

For what? This would've never happened.

You go back to the civil rights era, all of those people that like to talk about the civil rights era, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., you know, John Lewis, Elijah Cummings, all those people during that time, did you see them allowing their kids to do this on the roads? To, to knowingly break laws when they are dangerous? Did you see any of that during the civil rights era? The answer is no.

It's stupid now, it would've been stupid then, and it'll still be stupid in the future.

When we get back, we'll continue this conversation.

And so that's what we'll talk about in today's sermon.

The late Honorable John Lewis served in the House of Representatives from 1987 through 2020.

But this isn't where his public service began.

Besides stints as a member of the city council in Atlanta, Georgia, Mr. Lewis was an active member in social justice issues.

It was during this time, and specifically in 1961, where Mr. Lewis was beaten to within inches of his life.

Mr. Elwynn Wilson, a member of the KKK in South Carolina, confronted Lewis and others during one of their freedom rides.

As the freedom riders tried to enter a building that was labeled whites only, without saying a word, Mr. Wilson and others began their assault on the peaceful demonstrators of which John Lewis was one of many victims.

In today's gospel, we hear how to resolve conflict within the church.

Sitting in circles alongside Ossoff was Daniel Platzman, who you know as the drummer with Imagine Dragons.

Ossoff served as an intern for the late civil rights leader and US representative John Lewis.

Here's Greg Blustein, chief political reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He wrote a letter to John Lewis sort of out of the blue saying, I want to intern for you one day.

And imagine how many letters John Lewis's office is getting from students in the Metro Atlanta area and college students and actually probably graduates who would love nothing more than to intern with a living legend like John Lewis when he served in Congress.

But John Lewis was struck by John Ossoff's letter.

Something about it really reached him.

And a young John Ossoff interned for John Lewis and ended up parlaying that eventually into a job with another congressman, Congressman Hank Johnson.

You know, he's basically a political lifer.

He was connected to John Lewis, the great civil rights leader.

I had to believe interned for him, worked for another Georgia member of Congress.

And he ran for the House in 2017 in a special election that was maybe an indication of his skill because he lost it very narrowly in a deep red district.

Medgar Evers was there.

John Lewis was there.

James Farmer was there.

Fred Shuttlesworth was there.

They had been murdered.

Fannie Lou Hamer was jailed and brutally beaten in Winona, Mississippi.

After becoming involved in voter registration organizing, John Lewis suffered repeated assaults.

Freedom Riders were attacked.