INEQUALITY| ENDNOTE
Then and now
REMEMBERING THE 1963 MARCH ON WASHINGTON, AND WHAT CAME AFTER
BY JOHN LEWIS
on The day of The march on washingTon, i was
very excited about being able to speak to the crowd
about civil rights. I was ready. A. Philip Randolph
introduced me as “young John Lewis, national chairman,
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.” I said
to myself, “This is it. I must do my best.” I looked to my
right, I looked to my left, and I looked straight ahead,
and I went for it.
I think often about “young John Lewis.” Today, I
would tell him, “You got out there. You pushed and
you pulled. You helped lead a movement to make
things better for this generation and for generations yet
unborn.” I come in contact with a lot of young people,
a lot of young children. These kids are so smart and so
gifted—if we had been that smart and that gifted, we
would be much farther down the road.
We have come far since then, but there is still such a
distance to travel. So many of our people are suffering.
When we come to a point in our nation where little children,
babies, are being taken from their parents and put in cages,
I don’t think history will be kind to us.
I have never witnessed anything like
what we’re going through today. Not
during the 1960s, in spite of everything
that we came through—the arrests, the
jailings, the beatings. Something is hap-
pening in America today that is frighten-
ing. What is happening is a threat to our
democracy, and sometimes I fear that we
are in the process of losing it.
But we must never ever lose hope,
we must keep the faith, keep building
and working hard to create what
Dr. King and what others called the
“Beloved Community.” We have to
redeem the soul of America.Lewis is the U.S. Representative for
Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District
and a member of the 2017 TIME 100STEPPING
ONSTAGE
John Lewis,
23, Student
Nonviolent
Coordinating
Committee
chairman,
addressing
March on
Washington
attendees at
the Lincoln
Memorial on
Aug. 28, 1963