Puffery of a Civil Rights Activist Who Became a Career Politician
John Robert Lewis (1940-2020) served in the US House of Representatives for Georgia between 1987-2020. He held some type of political office between 1963-2020, or since he was 23, so he is an example of an early barrier-breaker.
The biography explains that back on July 15, 1962, Lewis “had to limit his Selma speech to then minutes”, because he had to then travel to Maryland to handle an ongoing riot that had the National Guard called against it (148). Then, there were agitations in Selma itself (169). In one incident in September, Lewis was marching behind a sign for, “One Man, One Vote”, when the sheriff focused on his group, before “Lewis fled” the threat of arrest. “He evaded the weapons, but was forced with others onto a bus and driven to jail.” There was press coverage, as Lewis sat in jail on Freedom Day (169). He was freed and carried on with other protests. The incident where he failed to avoid a beating in Selma occurred a bit later, in 1965, during another voting rights campaign. The Alabama State Troopers ordered them to disperse, and they instead stopped to pray, so the police release tear gas and attacked them with nightsticks, causing Lewis’ injuries (225).
I was curious how Lewis began to be elected to public office, so I searched for the term “elected”. An early mention is that he protested his failure to become the “rightfully elected chairman” of the SNCC. So he “felt betrayed and hurt”. Lewis attempted to leave the SNCC with his friends afterwards, or to pressure a “revote” in response to “a non-democratic ploy” (267). He seems to have gone as far as to threaten “the death of SNCC, of the movement”, but refrained from taking it this far (269). Lewis spent the following years actively designing “educational programs to help newly elected” black “officials”, and generally helping blacks to win public offices (323). There are some philosophical questions if “an elected official’s color” should “matter more than his positions” (334). There is a brief description of Lewis on the campaign trail, and broad promises, and some specifics, such as that he observed during his campaign, “peddlers of drugs and hot stolen merchandise” and hoped that the community could influence these hooligans by making them “embarrassed” of this criminality. This type of rhetoric succeeded in winning for Lewis “a slew of endorsements, including from the Constitution, and coasted to victory with 69 percent of the vote” (368), and he was off and running in his following non-stop political career.
There are too many abstract claims made in this biography without clear citations of their sources. And too much is unexplained. Just what is the relationship between Lewis creating a platform to support black politicians, and this platform being used specifically to help his own very early-starting career reach such meteoric success? Why was he threatening to overthrow the movement, if he was not granted power over it? Are these moral decisions? This book seems to be a puffery of Lewis that does not consider implied negatives. Despite these problems, it is important to document biographies of recent American political figures. Figuring out if they did something wrong, or right begins with a record of just what it is that they did. Most of the sources cited in the notes are newspaper articles, with a smaller percentage of interviews with associates. A successful politician is likely to have been manipulating what the press reported about them, as apparent from his endorsement by the Constitution at the defining early stage. Thus, it would have been a fairer biography if somebody other than these publicity-feeding or associate-driven sources had been consulted to check how the opposition perceived Lewis. There are no saintly white politicians, so it is suspicious when a book presents a saintly black politician. Then again, it is an incredible narrative of success despite the odds, and of a struggle for rights. And such stories are especially needed today: even if they are skewed towards the victory of justice, when in truth justice has mostly been losing.
--Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Summer 2024 issue

Greenberg has told the personal history of one of the legendary civil rights movement figures. I expected the book to focus solely on the years of his activity in the movement, but the book was so much more than that. More than illuminating the civil rights movement through Lewis' life, Greenberg helps readers to understand the commitment, passion, and spiritual strength that one man can have to a cause greater than himself.

From a young age, Lewis developed a sense of dedication and determination. This included his time in Nashville as a student. Greenberg implicitly argues (some times less implicitly than others, however) that Lewis saw this work not just as a political endeavor but a higher calling to help others. His awareness was clearly more substantial than others his age, even many who worked alongside him. From the sit-ins forward, Lewis held a courageous attitude that guided him all the way through his career in the Senate. This leadership was shaped and molded by his influential roles in SNCC and the Freedom Rides.

The book puts Lewis in a human light, showing his tenacity but also places where he was ambivalent or more cautious (especially in 1963).

Part II focuses on his life in politics, one that I'm guessing, more readers know less about. The traits he developed early on affected his later work, for instance in the VEP by showing a commitment to voting and democracy at large. It could be argued that Lewis developed a passion for doing the right thing when it may not have been popular. This was especially true with his tussles with Bond or during the Clinton presidency, even applied during the foreign policy work at the end of the Cold War. Not only did Lewis speak truth to power but he spoke truth to frustrations.

Greenberg's book is an insightful work that serves as mortar to fill in the gaps between our understanding of a major civil rights icon and his life of applying his philosophy of justice

Thank you Simon & Shuster for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I just finished John Lewis, by David Greenberg.

The book does an excellent job tracing Lewis’s entire career. The author had access to Lewis, as well interviewing about 250 people who knew him. Greenberg also obtained valuable FBI files and documents while researching this book. It is an extremely thorough look at Lewis’s entire life.

One of the many highlights of the book was the discussion on the march on Washington in 1963. There was plenty of good information on what was going on behind the scenes and of all of the preparations. Lewis was the youngest speaker at the event, which of course included King’s I Had a Dream speech. The book’s treatment of the march on Montgomery, which included the infamous incident of Lewis being beaten in Selma, was also excellent.

One of the great things about history books is all of the little tidbits that one learns throughout the book. One good example from this book was the Johnson administration had invited Lewis to attend the signing ceremony for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But, Lewis turned them down, since he was too busy with his work in Mississippi, as part of the Freedom Summer, at the time.

The book gives good coverage of Lewis’s relationships with people such as Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond and Bill Clinton. And speaking of Clinton, the book’s discussion of Lewis switching his support from Hillary to Obama was another one of its very many strengths.

Prior to reading this book, I had read two of this author’s previous books. I gave each one of them A’s. But, this one outperformed the others. It got an A+, which means I have inducted it into my Hall of Fame. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A+ equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

After I finished this book, I also preordered the audiobook version so I will be able to enjoy it again when it is released on October 8 (same date as the print and Kindle versions).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews.