Skip to main content

Lewis Says King Still Has Power to Influence People

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a "modern-day Moses, using organized religion and emotionalism in the black church as an instrument for freedom," U.S. Rep. John Lewis told a crowd of 700 gathered in Duke Chapel on Jan. 16 for the 11th annual celebration and commemoration service for the slain civil rights leader.

"Martin Luther King Jr., more than any other American of the 20th century, had the power to bring more people together to do good," said Lewis, who served as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966 and led the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma, Ala. "He liberated not just a people, but an entire nation."

In a frequently humorous speech, which was part of the university's week-long celebration of King and his legacy, Lewis recounted his childhood on a rural Alabama farm and his early involvement in the civil rights movement.

The son of sharecroppers, Lewis said he lived out his boyhood dream of becoming a preacher by assembling his chickens for Sunday sermons. "If it hadn't been for Martin Luther King Jr., I would still be down there in rural Alabama, preaching to those chickens," he said.

Instead, Lewis graduated from Fisk University and American Baptist Theological Seminary, organized sit-in demonstrations at segregated lunch counters while a student, joined the Freedom Rides in 1961 to help challenge racial segregation at interstate bus terminals and organized student demonstrations, voter registration drives and community action programs across the South as the leader of SNCC.

By 1963, Lewis was recognized as one of the "Big Six" leaders of the movement ‚ alongside King, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer and Roy Wilkins ‚ and helped plan and deliver a keynote speech at the historic March on Washington that summer. Two years later, he lead the march across Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., which helped ensure passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act through media coverage of the violent response to that demonstration by Alabama state police.

Lewis won his congressional seat in 1986 and is currently serving in his fifth term representing Georgia's 5th District.

The 59-year-old Lewis recalled hearing King speak for the first time as a teenager, during radio news coverage of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. Lewis met King a few years later, in 1958, and quickly became involved in the civil rights movement.

"He had the power to bring the filth out from under the American rug out into the light for us to deal with," Lewis said. "The assassins of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not kill the dream of peace. ... This one man inspired us all to live differently."

The world is a better, if still imperfect, place as a result of King's work, Lewis said. The truest way to honor his legacy is to help build "the beloved community" the slain civil rights leader dreamt about and "not get lost in a sea of despair.

"We're going to walk with the wind and let the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. be our guide," Lewis said. "Not just for now, but for ever more."

The next day, more than 100 students heeded King's message of service and community action by joining with 20 Durham volunteers to bag more than 47,000 pounds of sweet potatoes and distribute them to more than 37 area food banks. The effort, known as a "yam jam," was part of the second annual day-long series of student-led events to mark the federal holiday and closure of classes.

Dr. Brenda Armstrong, a pediatric cardiologist, associate dean of medical education and director of admissions for the Duke University School of Medicine, kicked off the celebration of King's birthday with a powerful keynote speech at the Jan. 14 candlelight vigil service in Duke Chapel.

Armstrong, who was a member of the third class at Duke to accept black undergraduates and helped lead the 1969 takeover of the Allen Building by African-American students, recalled what it was like to grow up in her racially segregated N.C. hometown.

"I drank 'colored' water. I sat at the back of the bus," she told the lunchtime crowd of more than 300. Born in a birthing room at home ‚ because her mother, the wife of a doctor, wasn't permitted in the whites-only hospital ‚ Armstrong wasn't allowed to play in the city playground, swim in the municipal pool or sit downstairs in the local cinema. The segregated schools she attended had discarded equipment, few books and failed to offer calculus or trigonometry courses because, in the words of one top school board member, "the colored children wouldn't need it."

While much progress has been made since those days, a brief look at today's depressing statistics on minority health, education, drug use, crime and poverty reveal much more work is necessary, Armstrong said. "I see us on the verge of completely dismantling Dr. King's dreams," she said.

That is why events marking King's birthday should not be simply an occasion to dress up and pat one another on the backs for a job well done, Armstrong said. Instead, these vigils, speeches and celebrations should be a call to service to help King's dreams become a reality.

"Be a generation of visionary people. Believe in something so fervently that you will stand up for it to the end of your days," Armstrong told the crowd. "This may be the last opportunity," she added later, "you have to help us become a true United States of America."