His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope

 

His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham

“Just love the hell out of everybody, it’s the better way. It’s the best way.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

I should first confess that this book was not what I thought it would be, and in that aspect I was disappointed.  I was wanting a biography of John Lewis.  I was also slightly disappointed because Jon Meacham is one of my favorite biographical authors, which meant that my hopes were high that, had this been a biography, it would be somewhat better than average.  This is not, however, a biography.  Instead, this book mainly serves as a memoir of the Civil Rights movement during the early 1960s, where future congressman John Lewis would be a major part of all the major events.

Had I known that this book would have focused more on the movement as opposed to the man, I’m not sure I would have read it. It’s not that I don’t value the history of such important events, it’s simply that I’ve read a lot about them already, and I don’t like to revisit them.  They’re simply horribly depressing.  I can’t understand how human beings can be so brutal and hateful towards other humans simply because of the color of their skin.  What makes this reading even more depressing is that much of the behavior we see distributed by these illiterate white morons seems to becoming more normal amongst the rabid followers of Donald Trump in our present day.  Anyone who stormed the capitol on January 6^th might be insulted by my comparison, but ask yourself this: Did you see ANY faces in that mob of imbeciles who weren’t white? I didn’t think so.

So back to the book.  The book does start out as somewhat of a biography.  We meet John Lewis during his youth in segregated Troy, Alabama in the early 1940s. Life was never fair for those without white skin, especially in the Jim Crow south. Yet you get the feeling that Lewis and his family were never bitter, and never let such prejudices disturb them too much.  They were solid Christians, and they believed that you don’t fight fire with fire, and the best way to be Christian was to keep the anger inside, and continuously forgive those who know not what they do.

We read about Lewis’s entrance into seminary where he eventually becomes a Baptist preacher. By the time the late 1950s arrive however, the times were definitely a-changin’.  Lewis soon meets many of the prolific black leaders of the young civil rights movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King.  Not everyone around Lewis agrees with his propensity to consistently turn the other cheek, but Lewis is better than most, and manages to keep so much of his anger on the inside.

We then essentially read about the key movements of the time.  The “forced” integration of schools, the Freedom Riders of 1961, the lunch counter protests, the Alabama church bombings, and the famous March on Washington culminating in King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.  Lewis seems to be right in the middle of every one of these events.  Sadly, also in the middle is a plethora of Southern white ignorance. From Mayors to Governors, Police Chiefs to Congressmen, the stench is everywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Again, the parallels of these idiots to modern day movements such as Qanon and the “Proud” Boys are scarily similar.  It’s so sad how many of these modern-day dolts are so ignorant of history and can’t foretell how history will remember them fifty years in the future.

So, yes, this book made me angry. And very sad as well.  Once we get a Civil Rights bill in 1964, our narrative, sadly, basically stops.  We briefly read about the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, yet the rest of Lewis’s life is essentially a brief epilogue in this book.  I really wanted more than what I got, and less than what I was given.

So if you’re aware of these things that I’m mentioning before choosing to read this book, maybe you won’t come away disappointed as I did to some extent.  Jon Meacham is a great author and he does keep the narrative flowing at a very digestible and easy to understand pace.  It was just such a sad sad time in history.  Speaking of history, one wishes that more people actually read and studied history a bit more instead of binge-watching idiot “reality” t.v. shows and viewing conspiracy videos on YouTube.  Maybe, just maybe, we would be less likely to repeat so many of our tragic hateful mistakes of the past.