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Getting Into “Good Trouble”

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Getting Into “Good Trouble” GETTING INTO “GOOD TROUBLE” “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” John Lewis, June 2018 The Hon. John Robert Lewis – February 21, 1940 - July 17, 2020 The Rev. Cordy Tindell “CT” Vivian – July 30, 1924 - July 17, 2020 How shall we remember these lions of the Civil Rights Movement? What is the worth of a man who spends his whole life getting into “good trouble”? On the same day in 2020, the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, and the first author chronicling the Civil Rights Movement (1970) passed away. Within hours of each other, the only one of the March on Washington “Big Six” to go to Congress (17 consecutive terms), and the most prolific and long-running civil rights organizer took their last breaths. Who could have imagined that these two men, separated in age by 15 years, who lived parallel lives as they worked together in the Civil Rights Movement, would spend the last 50 years residing in the same city, Atlanta, and would die on the same day? Both men were Baptist Ministers Both worked together with the Nashville, TN Student Movement Both men participated in the Freedom Rides of 1961 Both were arrested on July 7, 1961 and spent time in Parchman Prison, Mississippi Both were leaders in the organization of the March on Washington Both were subjected to violence and police brutality, and were jailed multiple times Both were recipients of multiple honors and awards Both men received the country’s highest honor: the Medal of Freedom Both men were famously effective at organizing, advocating and persuading people In his famous speech of 9/12/2014, “What is a man worth?”, CT Vivian questioned how our value as African Americans was to be measured, since we were brought to the U.S. by deception and sold as property. Could a man’s worth be measured by the price paid for him? Can we, as children of God, be valued based on the work or services we provide? 1 Today, as we bid goodbye to these two giants of the Civil Rights Movement, and as we consider all the great things they have accomplished to advance the struggle for equity and freedom, the question answers itself. Reviewing their lives and accomplishments reminds us that no effort to debase us as property, to deny our liberty, to prevent our literacy, or to refuse us the franchise can ever negate our sacred humanity. Although a debt remains owed to African Americans as major contributors to construction of the greatest economy on earth, the two great lives of Lewis and Vivian, free of hatred, bitterness or revenge, continue to inspire us, and show us the path to a greater tomorrow. In 1924, Cordy Tindell Vivian was born in Boonville, Missouri, and raised from an early age in Illinois. He had early instincts to right the wrongs of injustice. In his first job after college, at the Carver Community Center in Peoria, IL, he participated in sit-in demonstrations there that successfully desegregated the Barton’s Cafeteria in 1947. When he moved to Nashville, TN to study for the ministry at American Baptist Theological Seminary, he joined the Nashville Student Movement, where students from American Baptist, Fisk and Tennessee State were learning and practicing nonviolence, and engaging in direct action protest. There, he met John Lewis, a teen who was also studying for ministry at American Baptist, and who, along with Diane Nash and other student organizers, was learning the Mohandas Gandhi method of nonviolent action under James Lawson, as part of the Nashville Student Movement. John Lewis, a native of Troy, Alabama, was born in 1940 to a sharecropping family. He aspired to be a preacher from the age of 5, and preached his first public sermon at age 15. As he experienced discrimination and segregation in his own town, he became activated around issues of the Civil Rights Movement as he followed the work of Dr. Martin Luther King and the 1955 2 Montgomery Bus Boycott. His own civil rights activity began to take shape once he moved to Nashville, Tennessee to attend seminary, and there he organized and participated in sit-in demonstrations, bus boycotts and protest marches as part of the Nashville Student Movement. C.T. Vivian joined in their activities to fight against segregated lunch counters and public transportation. In April 1960, Vivian and Diane Nash, led a peaceful march of 4,000 students down to City Hall to discuss these problems with Nashville Mayor, Ben West, which led to West making a public statement denouncing racial discrimination Both Lewis and Vivian were arrested and jailed countless times. Both endured attacks and beatings at the hands of counter-protesters, the Ku Klux Klan, prison guards and police. Yet, they never fought back, and they continued to stand firm in the truth that freedom must be won. During the Freedom Rides of 1961, Lewis was attacked and beaten several times. The Freedom Rides were initiated to pressure the federal government to enforce the Supreme Court rulings, Keys vs. Carolina Coach Company (1955), specifically declaring segregation in interstate bus travel as unconstitutional, and Boynton vs. Virginia (1960), which also outlawed segregation in restaurants and terminals of interstate bus stations. The Freedom Riders were within their rights to oppose the Jim Crow segregation laws, and the federal government was slow to intervene and protect them. Lewis, at age 21, was the first rider to be assaulted during the Freedom Rides, when he attempted to enter a whites only waiting room in South Carolina, and two White men attacked him, disfiguring his face, kicking him in the ribs and injuring him severely. Yet, two weeks later Lewis was on the Freedom Ride to Mississippi, where both he and Vivian were among many who were arrested and imprisoned in Mississippi’s notorious 3 Parchman Prison. According to Lewis, the governor had ordered the guards to break the riders’ spirits. Lewis was kept there for 40 days; Vivian was brutally beaten by prison guards. The courage of these civil rights leaders was phenomenal – as they faced danger, endured violent attacks and imprisonment, risking injury and death. Lewis later said, "We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal. We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back." (“The Freedom Riders, Then and Now”, Smithsonian Magazine, 9/24/12). Such was the courage of these young people that, when the Freedom Rides organizer, Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) abandoned the Freedom Rides project as becoming too violent, Lewis and Diane Nash were among the Nashville Student Movement leaders who took up the cause and re-organized the Freedom Rides. Nash insisted on continuing the rides believing that the nonviolent action of Freedom Rides was necessary despite the dangers they were facing at the hands of mobs and lawless police. The student leaders gathered groups of Blacks and Whites to continue the rides into major cities in the Deep South. There the buses were often met by unruly mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, supported and condoned by the police. The riders were routinely beaten, left unconscious on the roadside, ambulances would refuse to take them to the hospital, the buses bombed and burned, and the riders were imprisoned. Yet they kept on riding. At least 436 people took part in over 60 freedom rides, from May to December 1961. Finally, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued federal regulations directing state compliance with the federal laws against segregation in interstate transportation. The Freedom Rides were a success. The Freedom Riders had won for Blacks the right to travel anywhere, sit anywhere, eat anywhere, and use any restroom in any town that they pleased. 4 In 1963, Lewis was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a Dream” speech. The march and the continued nonviolent protests led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1965, Lewis and Vivian traveled to Alabama to support the efforts of the Montgomery Improvement Association to demand voting rights for Blacks, who were facing barriers to their right to register and vote, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, brute force, deception and imprisonment. Lewis was one of the student leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Vivian represented the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). That February, as Vivian stood on the courthouse steps demanding that Black people be allowed to enter and register, an officer sucker punched him and knocked him to the ground. Vivian simply stood back up and continued to make his case. The officers blocking the courthouse door arrested and jailed Vivian. The entire scene was caught on TV cameras and broadcast nationwide. Not one month later, on March 7, Lewis was among the leaders who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery, on the way to the Alabama Capitol to demand the right to vote. Police waiting at the end of the bridge ordered the marchers to turn around, but before they could comply, the police attacked and brutally beat them. Lewis’ skull was fractured and he had a concussion. Another demonstrator, Amelia Boynton, was beaten unconscious and left at the edge of the bridge.
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