Previously available through PBS Video [see VL-9/17], Kathleen Dowdey’s biographical film on the late civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman remains a good introduction, and enthusiastic tribute, to his eventful life and political career. Grounded on extensive excerpts from interviews with Lewis and his friends, relatives, and colleagues, as well as an abundance of archival material, the film follows the career of the man who came to be recognized as the conscience of Congress from his humble beginnings as the son of a sharecropper in segregated Alabama. During his childhood, he longed to become a preacher and eventually fulfilled his ambition by continuing his education and attaining ordination as a Baptist minister.
By that time, however, he had come under the influence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and became an activist in the civil rights movement, organizing sit-ins at lunch counters, bus boycotts, and nonviolent protests that led to his being repeatedly jailed and the conclusion—which he repeated over the years—that causing such “good trouble, necessary trouble” was essential to effecting change. In 1961 he was one of the original Freedom Riders on buses traveling from Washington into the South, instigating a national outcry at the beatings they suffered as local law enforcement stood idly by. Two years later, he was elected to the chairmanship of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in which capacity he led voter registration drives and helped organize the the1963 March on Washington, where he was the youngest speaker, giving an address whose radicalism had to be toned down before it was delivered.
His national profile was further elevated by the Selma March of 1965, in which he and others were brutally attacked by state troopers as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The violence shocked the nation and was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year, and when more outspoken black leaders argued for tactical changes in the struggle for equality, he was loyal to the nonviolent strategy of King, who remained his mentor and close friend until his assassination in 1968.
Lewis ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Congress in 1978, but after a stint on the Atlanta City Council (1981-1986) and a bitter party primary that pitted him against fellow civil rights champion Julian Bond, he won the election as Representative for Georgia’s Fifth District in 1986, holding the seat until his death that year. Although Dowdey’s film is chronologically incomplete, it certainly offers a full portrayal of Lewis’ unwavering dedication to the ideals he espoused from the very beginning of his public life and his collaboration with Dr. King, which led him in later years to embrace the other causes such as gun control, the rights of immigrants, and equality for the LGBTQ community. This inspiring documentary on one of the country’s most significant civil rights pioneers is highly recommended. Aud: J, H, C, P.