“I fought too long & too hard against discrimination based on race & color, not to fight against discrimination based on sexual orientation,” tweeted civil rights icon John Lewis on July 23, 2015.
Fifty-five years ago, on May 14, 1961, Lewis rode with the Freedom Riders in a bus pelted by rocks and bricks, as axes smashed through windshields, a firebomb lobbed through the shattered glass. State troopers fired warning shots – but whom they warned was not the violent mob.
The bus’s passengers were black and white Americans riding together, testing the recent Supreme Court ruling that said it would be illegal to segregate public transportation passengers based on their race.
John Lewis was the first Freedom Rider to be assaulted. And yet, a battered face and broken ribs did not prevent him from continuing his ride. “We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal,” Lewis has said of the experience. “We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back.”
As the fight for civil rights continued over the ensuing years, Lewis kept to his conviction that there was no turning back. Three years following the Freedom Riders’ journeys aboard greyhounds, Lewis marched in Selma, Mississippi, in a demonstration of their urgent insistence on African Americans’ right to vote amidst widespread voter suppression. On a day that became known as Bloody Sunday, the peaceful protesters were beaten by state troopers who met them at the end of Edmond Pettus Bridge.
After a lifetime of fighting for civil rights, John Lewis has never stooped to rest. As a champion of LGBTQ rights, Lewis gave an impassioned speech in a 1996 debate on the Defense of Marriage Act, where he lashed out against any who would deny LGBTQ citizens’ their right to marriage.
“I will not turn my back on another American,” he said. “I will not oppress my fellow human being. I fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
[watch the full speech here]
Lewis has been elected to Congress fourteen times, a few times running unopposed, beloved for his bravery and dedication to fighting for the rights of his constituents and fellow Americans at large. He has recently received media attention for the criticism laid down on him by President Donald Trump, who said of the civil rights hero, “All talk, talk, talk — no action or results. Sad!”
With the sun high on the first day of February, a new month awaits dedicated to remembering the contributions of Black Americans throughout our history. They are the trailblazers who have fought tirelessly for justice and equality, and who today continue to fight for their community, in addition to others marginalized in similar manners, allies united in their advocation.