Quotes from John Lewis and C.T. Vivian.
- Brandon Michael Chew
- Jul 19, 2020
- 3 min read
Politician John Lewis and Reverend C.T. Vivian passed away on June 17, 2020. Lewis died at the age of 80 due to cancer, while Vivian died of natural causes at the age of 95.
John Lewis was a member of the Freedom Riders, a group of civil rights activists who rode interstate busses across the Southern United States to challenge the non-enforcement of desegregation.
At the age of 23, Lewis helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to a crowd of over two-hundred thousand.
In 1964 Lewis helped organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s volunteer campaign “Mississippi Summer Project,” which sought to register as many African-Americans as possible to vote.
A year later, Lewis lead hundreds of marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Al., where they were met by a force of Alabama State Troopers who beat the demonstrators with night sticks on “Bloody Sunday.” The following marches from Selma to Montgomery culminated with the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Lewis was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives for Georgia’s 5th congressional district in 1987, a position he served until his passing.
C.T. Vivian began protesting against segregation on the lunch counters of Peroia, Illinois, in 1947. In 1955, Vivian enrolled in the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville.
Vivian helped found the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference, a group affiliated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Nashville affiliate organized sit-ins in 1960, and continued the Freedom Rides into Jackson, Mississippi, following the disbandment of the Congress of Racial Equality.
In 1963, MLK appointed Vivian as the national director of affiliates for the SCLC, a position where Vivian was instrumental in the passing of both the Civil Rights Bill and the Voting Rights Act.
In 1966, Vivian moved to Chicago to join the Urban Training Center for Christian Missions.
According to the National Visionary Leadership Project, Vivian served “on the board of the Center for Democratic Renewal, the National Voting Rights Museum and as a founder of Capital City Bank, a black-owned bank in Atlanta. He has provided civil rights counsel to Presidents Johnson, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton.”
Quotes:
“We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jails over and over again. And then you holler, 'Be patient.' How long can we be patient?”
John Lewis
“People do not choose rebellion, it is forced upon them. Revolution is always an act of self-defense.”
C.T. Vivian
“It was not enough to come and listen to a great sermon or message every Sunday morning and be confined to those four walls and those four corners. You had to get out and do something.”
John Lewis
“Leadership is found in the action to defeat that which would defeat you…. You are made by the struggles you choose.”
C.T. Vivian
“Some of us gave a little blood for the right to participate in the democratic process.”
John Lewis
“Blacks have a condition, not a problem. Whites have the problem, racism, that creates our condition.”
C.T. Vivian
“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.”
John Lewis
“I say to people today, 'You must be prepared if you believe in something. If you believe in something, you have to go for it. As individuals, we may not live to see the end.”
John Lewis
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