| By Debra Adams Simmons, HISTORY Executive Editor
Nobody will ever ask: "What would John Lewis do?" The departed civil rights leader was remarkably consistent throughout his life on his mission to make America live up to the promises of its Constitution. “We are one family,” he told National Geographic Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg in 2018. “It doesn't matter whether you're black or white, Latino or Asian American. We are one people.”
As we approach the 57th anniversary of the historic March on Washington, Lewis’s life’s work is a master class in the sustained fight for justice. The last surviving speaker of the historic march, Lewis was college-aged when he, as one of 13 original Freedom Riders, rode interstate buses through the South, challenging segregation that had been deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The young firebrand was among a next generation of civil rights leaders coached by Martin Luther King, Jr.
As the Rev. Jesse Jackson put it after Lewis’s death on Friday, he “became the valedictorian of our class.” It was utterly consistent of Lewis, beaten nearly to death for the cause of one-person, one-vote, to boycott the inaugurations of two presidents who got fewer votes at the polls than their principal rivals.
His great joy came in watching young people “learn about the suffering and the pain but also the goodness that came out of the struggle,” he told National Geographic. “And I tell young people all the time, we live in a better America. America is better, and that cannot be denied, in some of these small towns and communities in the heart of the Deep South. You see Black people, white people, and Native Americans working and struggling together.”
“Well you know I tell people all the time, be hopeful. Be hopeful, be optimistic. ... Dr. King would say 'Never ever hate, be hopeful, be optimistic, for hate is too heavy a burden to bear.'"
So too, Lewis told us, was the burden of race.
He kept protesting, staging sit-ins, getting arrested, writing young adult graphic novels, even showing up last month—in his final public appearance—at the freshly created Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., across from the White House. He represented those, of whatever background, who had their representation threatened. Latinx activists considered him a lifelong ally; his last tweet opposed an effort to make foreign students risk getting COVID-19 by attending class in person—or face deportation.
In one episode of the children’s TV show Arthur, Lewis offered the next generation of Americans a way to be.
"There's nothing more important than following your conscience," he told Arthur—and millions of young American viewers. "If you can do that, you're always going to sleep well."
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