Tag: Tribute

Beloved Community, Black Lives Matter, Civil Rights Movement, Courage, Good Trouble, In Memorium, John Lewis, Justice, Nonviolence, Perseverance, Persistence, Politics, Prophetic, Racism, strength, struggle, Tenacity

Remembering John Lewis

kathymfindley

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Because I am a citizen of the state of Georgia, I can call him mine — my congressman, my conscience, my inspiration.

John Lewis
A warrior in building the soul of America

Representative John Lewis, a son of sharecroppers and an apostle of nonviolence who was bloodied at Selma and across the Jim Crow South in the historic struggle for racial equality, and who then carried a mantle of moral authority into Congress, died on Friday. He was 80.*

Twice he was beaten to an inch of his life.

I have been in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life.    — John Lewis

On the front lines of the bloody campaign to end Jim Crow laws, with blows to his body and a fractured skull to prove it, Mr. Lewis was a valiant stalwart of the civil rights movement and the last surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington — where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech — but Lewis was almost refused to be allowed to speak by march organizers because of his strident criticism of the Kennedy administration.

Lewis went on to serve 17 terms in the US House of Representatives, where he was considered the north star of conscience in Congress.**

Tributes to the life and legacy of John Lewis came from hundreds of voices.

“Not many of us get to live to see our own legacy play out in such a meaningful, remarkable way. John Lewis did,” former President Obama said in a written tribute. “And thanks to him, we now all have our marching orders — to keep believing in the possibility of remaking this country we love until it lives up to its full promise.”

Joe Biden, and his wife, Jill, issued a statement that began, “We are made in the image of God, and then there is John Lewis. How could someone in flesh and blood be so courageous, so full of hope and love in the face of so much hate, violence, and vengeance?”

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said: “His courage helped transform this country. He won’t ever be forgotten by those who believe America can change when the people stand together and demand it.”

Sen. Kamala Harris of California said of Lewis, “He carried the baton of progress and justice to the very end. It now falls on us to pick it up and march on.” ***

And so we will, to honor his memory and to persist in the fight against injustice.


John Lewis.
America’s inspiration for 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.
— A tweet from June 2018

I appeal to all of you to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation.  Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete.
— At the 1963 March on Washington

Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.
— From his 2017 memoir, “Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America”

My dear friends: Your vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union.
— From a 2012 speech in Charlotte, North Carolina

You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone—any person or any force—dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant.
— From his 2017 memoir, “Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America”

We have been too quiet for too long. There comes a time when you have to say something. You have to make a little noise. You have to move your feet. This is the time.
— At a 2016 House sit-in following the Pulse shooting in Orlando

When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something. To do something. Our children and their children will ask us, ‘What did you do? What did you say?’ For some, this vote may be hard. But we have a mission and a mandate to be on the right side of history.
— 2019 remarks in the House on impeachment of President Trump

 

May his words echo in our hearts and reach the soul of every American. 

May he rest in peace and — from above — inspire us to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God” as he did.

 

John Lewis
Servant of God and champion for justice, now called to his heavenly home

 

 
With thanks to:
* Katharine Q. Seelye, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/john-lewis-dead.html

** Ken Sehested, http://www.prayerandpolitiks.org/

*** Janet Hook, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-07-18/tributes-rep-john-lewis-dies-civil-rights

 

 

 

Martin Luther King, Jr., Politics, Prayer, Robert F. Kennedy, Tribute, Uncategorized

Robert F. Kennedy: A Tribute

kathymfindley

3DBDB3DF-6217-4BB9-8558-F5C4BF3F3CC3It was called the greatest speech ever written — April 4, 1968.

A predominantly black crowd gathered in the streets of Indianapolis. They had had not yet heard the devastating news of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. It was Robert F. Kennedy who brought them the pain-filled news in a brief announcement. And then he shared the unending pain he felt, but seldom mentioned publicly, of his brother’s death in Dallas. He pleaded with the crowd to “return home, to say a prayer . . . for understanding and compassion . . . to make gentle the life of the world.” 

They did go home, and Indianapolis was one of the few American cities that did not burn that night. 

When we contemplate today’s headlines, some of us can hear Robert Kennedy’s voice and imagine him speaking out in our country — on the madness of gun violence, on the shame of police brutality, on the need for compassion in welcoming immigrants and refugees, on the moral necessity to seek peace instead of war, and on the divisiveness of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and all other challenges to our quest for unity. His way of communicating with others — personally or in crowds of people — was calming and inspiring.

When he spoke, he often called for peace and unity:

Surely we can learn, at least, to bind up the wounds among us and become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

— Robert F. Kennedy

Clearly, Robert F. Kennedy was loved by the everyday people of this nation — the factory and farm workers, the coal miners and the steel workers, the teachers and the doctors, the people who lived in the most modest neighborhoods as well as the people in the mansions on the hilltops. Why such an appeal? It could well be because his life and leadership were forged in the civil rights battles he faced as attorney general and in his own harrowing introspection after his brother’s assassination on November 22, 1963. 

Less than five years after losing his brother, “as he lay shot and bleeding on the kitchen floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he looked up and asked: “Is everybody OK?”

— Robert Morris Shrum, Director and Carmen H. and Louis Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics, UNiversity of Southern California

The books and films on Robert F. Kennedy’s life are so compelling that even persons who were not yet born then can grasp why millions flocked to rail sides as his funeral train traveled ever so slowly from New York to Washington, DC. In the midst of a nation’s despondency at losing the third great American leader, the train carrying his body was a kind of defiant last rally, a tribute not only to who he had been, but to what might have been. His daughter described that day.

A train carried his body from New York City to the nation’s capital. Crowds lined the train tracks, and waved, and cried. That train ride was supposed to be three hours, and instead it turned out to be almost seven hours. Two million people came out.  African Americans in Baltimore singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Nobody organized this; it was spontaneous.

— Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

As always, we have the opportunity to grow and learn on the other side of tragic loss. We would do well to listen carefully to the plea spoken so many years ago by Robert F. Kennedy to the people grieving the death of Dr. King.

Say a prayer . . . for understanding and compassion . . . to make gentle the life of the world.

Let’s do that, right in the face of today’s angst over so many ills and wrongs. Let’s “say a prayer . . . to make gentle the life of the world.”

Amen