David Greenberg’s new biography, John Lewis: A Life, chronicles the remarkable story of the civil rights activist and congressman. Professor Kenneth Mack of Harvard University joins Greenberg for a discussion of Lewis’ life and impact on American history, whose heroism during the Civil Rights Movement helped inspire America’s new birth of freedom. Lana Ulrich, vice president of content and senior counsel at the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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David Greenberg is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University and a frequent commentator on historical and political affairs. Formerly acting editor of The New Republic and then a columnist for Slate, Greenberg now writes regularly for Politico, Liberties, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He is the author or editor of several books on American history and politics, including Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image and Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. His new book is John Lewis: A Life.
Kenneth Mack is the inaugural Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law and affiliate professor of history at Harvard University. He is also the co-faculty leader of the Harvard Law School program on law and history. He is the author of Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer as well as co-editor of In Between and Across: Legal History Without Boundaries and The New Black: What Has Changed – And What Has Not – With Race in America. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and Georgetown Universities, and the University of Hawai’i, and has served as senior visiting scholar at the Centre for History and Economics at University of Cambridge.
Lana Ulrich is the vice president of content and senior counsel at the National Constitution Center. As the Center’s vice president of content, she manages the Center’s constitutional content and programming initiatives, including podcasts, America's Town Hall programs, museum exhibits, and online content such as the Interactive Constitution and the Constitution Daily blog. As the Center’s senior counsel, she assists with any legal matters relating to the Center's operations.
Additional Resources
- 2016 Liberty Medal Ceremony in honor of Representative John Lewis
- David Greenberg, John Lewis: A Life (2024)
- “Rep. John Lewis on MLK and ‘Good Trouble,’” Live at the National Constitution Center podcast (Jan. 2020)
- Boynton v. Virginia (1960)
- Civil Rights Era documents selected by Kenneth Mack and Christopher Brooks, NCC Founders’ Library
- Kenneth Mack, Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer (2012)
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
- Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement”
- Voting Rights Act (1965)
- John Lewis, Remarks at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016)
Excerpt from Interview: David Greenberg explains how John Lewis skillfully brought federal funding to his district through his committee roles while becoming a vocal civil rights leader.
David Greenberg: Well, Lewis plays it pretty smart. Like a lot of new congressmen, he sort of figures out, one of his first tasks is bringing home the bacon to his district. He gets put on a couple committees that are maybe seen as lesser committees. One is, I think interior and one is transportation. They have longer names than that. But he uses his spot on the transportation committee to help Atlanta, which has a major airport and is doing a lot of highway construction as the city is booming economically. On the interior, he kind of brings money to, for example, make the Sweet Auburn District of Dr. King's childhood home and other Black neighborhood into a historic neighborhood that can get federal funds that way. So he is thinking very creatively about how to help.
But he also, not surprisingly, becomes an outspoken leader on civil rights issues. People remember George Bush Sr. Very fondly these days. They forget that he was the first president to veto a Civil Rights Act since I believe Andrew Johnson. There was the Civil Rights Act, first it was 1990 that he vetoed, and then it came in in '91. And Speaker of the House, Tom Foley, a Democrat, brings John Lewis into the house leadership. He's only been in Congress a few years, but he's made a Deputy Chief Whip. And Foley does this in part because he wants John Lewis to be in those White House meetings with George HW Bush. And at one of them, Lewis sort of bringing his moral fervor to the table tells Bush you can't keep demagoguing the Civil rights Bill. Bush was calling it a quota bill, even though the Democrats had put in language explicitly saying this cannot be construed to support strict racial quotas.
And he kind of read Bush the Riot Act. And not for that reason alone, but from increasing pressure over the next few months, Bush ends up signing that 1991 bill. It was a real face. And so people in Congress, Foley, the Democrats, but also John Lewis, come to see that his moral authority can be a real weapon and a tool to achieve some important legislative changes. And that if he uses it strategically, he can actually turn his reputation into something that has real political efficacy.
Excerpt from Interview: Kenneth Mack discusses how civil disobedience in Selma exposed local police violence against protesters and highlighted the Justice Department's struggle to protect marchers when local authorities failed.
Kenneth Mack: Well, it was civil disobedience. It was disobeying unjust laws. There were some legal basis for some of the things they did, like the Freedom Rides. But Selma really does sort of crystallize it because, as you said, it's not as if police officers were always involved in the violence, even the violence that purports to be by KKK mobs was coordinated with local police, facilitated with local police. But in Selma, it is the local police who are beating the civil rights protesters, which is different. And that's the image that gets broadcast around the country. So it really is unjust laws and unjust legal system, unjust power, all of that stuff.
And then there's this question of discipline. I mean, one of the things that David's book makes clear is that Lewis is an ultra disciplined person. There weren't a lot of student protests then. This is actually the origin of our modern student protest movements that are so familiar today. But there weren't really a lot of student protests then. It's just beginning. These people are starting it. And how do you remain disciplined? How do you keep somebody from breaking off and engaging in violence? Well, what do you do if the police arrest you? Do you pay the fine and do you get out of jail or do you just serve your sentence? And in Nashville, they decide to serve their sentences. There are all these things that are kind of pioneering that are so familiar today, but they are kind of inventing it, trying to figure out how we do this and how do we remain disciplined and what's going to happen to us and violence might happen to us.
So that's kind of what this moment is about. And there are a bunch of legal angles to it. The Kennedy administration as an administration wasn't as sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movement as it might have been. But the one locus of sympathy is the Department of Justice. Sorry, not that one. The greatest locus of sympathy is the Department of Justice and run by Robert Kennedy. And they're kind of trying to figure out ways to protect the civil rights marchers. Sometimes they send in federal marshals. But the problem is law enforcement protection of the public is a local function. The police are supposed to do it. And the Civil Rights Movement and civil rights laws have all been about trying to empower the federal government to step in when the police aren't going to protect you, when the police are basically saying they're not going to protect you, and when the police are beating you up.
And so it's a kind of complicated dance for Robert Kennedy and the Justice Department to figure out when we can send the marshals? What can we do to try to protect these folks in the South? Because the whole basis of the legal system is that the local and state authorities are supposed to protect them. But it's the local and state authorities who are going to oppress them, often violently.
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