The Soul of America

by Jon Meacham

  Born in 1940 to sharecropper parents, Lewis overcame a childhood stutter by preaching to chickens on the family farm in Pike County, Alabama. After the Montgomery bus boycott catapulted King to fame, Lewis sought out the emerging civil rights icon, became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and began a fabled life in the movement. Lewis was beaten and arrested across the South, including on the epochal Freedom Rides; spoke at the March on Washington in 1963; and was leading the Selma-to-Montgomery voting-rights effort when he and Hosea Williams crested the Pettus Bridge and spotted the line of troopers on that March Sunday.

  Lewis had prepared to be arrested. In his backpack he carried two books, an apple and an orange, and a toothbrush and toothpaste. Then he heard the commander’s order: “Troopers, advance!” He has always remembered the enormity, the totality, of the reaction of his attackers: “The troopers and possemen swept forward as one, like a human wave, a blur of blue shirts and billy clubs and bullwhips,” Lewis wrote in his affecting memoir of the movement, Walking with the Wind. “We had no chance to turn and retreat.” The pain was to be endured. There was no help for it.

  Lewis made it back to Brown Chapel AME, the Selma church that served as the headquarters for the march, and was eventually persuaded to go to a local emergency room. He still remembers the ambient smell of tear gas from the clothes of the victims seeking medical attention.

  For Lewis, the civil rights struggle always centered on whether the best of the American soul (the grace and the love, the godliness and the generosity) could finally win out over the worst (the racism and the hatred, the fear and the cruelty). In the end, after the marches and the beatings and the riots, the light has largely triumphed over the dark. “I always felt growing up that in the South there was evil but also good—so much good,” Lewis said. “We are still in the process of becoming. I am very, very hopeful about the American South—I believe that we will lead America to what Dr. King called ‘the beloved community.’ I travel all the time, but when I come back to the South, I see such progress. In a real sense a great deal of the South has been redeemed. People feel freer, more complete, more whole, because of what happened in the movement.”

  Sunday, March 7, 1965, would become known as “Bloody Sunday” after Alabama authorities attacked nonviolent voting-rights marchers.

  He is a preacher still, one whose voice, trained so long ago in the farmyard, continues to captivate. “The march of 1965 injected something very special into the soul and the heart and the veins of America,” Lewis said. “It said, in effect, that we must humanize our social and political and economic structure. When people saw what happened on that bridge, there was a sense of revulsion all over America.”

  Revulsion, then redemption: “In the final analysis, we are one people, one family, one house—not just the house of black and white, but the house of the South, the house of America,” Lewis said. “We can move ahead, we can move forward, we can create a multiracial community, a truly democratic society. I think we’re on our way there. There may be some setbacks. But we are going to get there. We have to be hopeful. Never give up, never give in, keep moving on.”

  * * *

  —

  As images from the beatings at Selma spread around the nation, Johnson knew he needed to act. But he was careful. To lash out at Governor Wallace and the power structure in Alabama too hard might create more problems than it solved. “If I just send in federal troops with their big black boots, it will look like Reconstruction all over again,” Johnson said privately. “I will lose every moderate, not just in Alabama but all over the South. Most southern people don’t like this violence. They know deep in their hearts that things are going to change….But not if it looks like the Civil War all over again!”

  Working through his friend Buford Ellington, a once and future Tennessee governor, Johnson got Wallace to agree to come to the White House for a meeting. It was a classic LBJ encounter. The president seated Wallace on a couch in the Oval Office and then positioned himself in a taller rocking chair, dominating the smaller man. “I kept my eyes directly on the Governor’s face the entire time,” Johnson recalled. “I saw a nervous, aggressive man; a rough, shrewd politician who had managed to touch the deepest chords of pride as well as prejudice among his people.”

  Wallace, the looming Johnson said, could take care of all this trouble in a heartbeat. “Why don’t you just desegregate all your schools?” Johnson asked. “You and I go out there in front of those television cameras right now, and you announce you’ve decided to desegregate every school in Alabama.”

  “Oh, Mr. President, I can’t do that,” Wallace said. “You know, the schools have got school boards. They’re locally run. I haven’t got the political power to do that.”

  “Don’t you shit me, George Wallace,” Johnson said. Later, in the meeting, the president pressed a larger question.

  “George, why are you doing this?” Johnson asked. “You came into office a liberal—you spent all your life trying to do things for the poor. Now, why are you working on this? Why are you off on this Negro thing? You ought to be down there calling for help for Aunt Susie in the nursing home.”

  “Segregation forever!” Governor George Wallace declared in his inaugural address in January 1963. That June he made a show of standing in the door of the University of Alabama to prevent its integration—but failed.

  He described the Great Society—the broad Johnson program on healthcare, education, and poverty. Everything seemed possible. Why not get on board?

  “Now, listen, George, don’t think about 1968,” Johnson said. “Think about 1988. You and me, we’ll be dead and gone then, George….What do you want left after you, when you die? Do you want a great big marble monument that reads, ‘George Wallace—He Built.’ Or do you want a little piece of scrawny pine board lying across that harsh caliche soil that reads, ‘George Wallace—He Hated.’ ”

  Wallace surrendered. Under pressure from the president, the governor consented to maintain order when the march resumed. “Hell, if I’d stayed in there much longer,” Wallace remarked, “he’d have had me coming out for civil rights.” The marchers would be protected. The president of the United States had prevailed.

  * * *

  —

  The meeting with Wallace was held at midday on Saturday, March 13, 1965. Two days later, on the evening of Monday, March 15, Lyndon Johnson entered the chamber of the House of Representatives with a purposeful stride. He did not pause to shake many hands as he walked to the well; he had work to do. Standing at the rostrum with Vice President Humphrey and Speaker of the House John McCormack behind him, the president opened a folder—the address had been written, on deadline, by Richard Goodwin—and began to speak. He did so slowly. Johnson’s public cadences could be unctuous, even ponderous, as he sought to infuse his public rhetoric with solemnity. Tonight, the tone was just right. He seemed, for once for a public man, free from political calculation or pragmatic consideration. “I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy,” Johnson said. “I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.” He went on:

  At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama….

  In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation.

  The issue of equal rights
for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.

  For with a country as with a person, “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

  Here, for the first time, the lawmakers and guests were moved from reverie to applause. The evocation of scripture—Johnson was quoting the words of Jesus from the Gospel of St. Mark—resonated. The president continued:

  There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans—not as Democrats or Republicans—we are met here as Americans to solve that problem.

  This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: “All men are created equal”—“government by consent of the governed”—“give me liberty or give me death.” Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories….

  Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote….

  Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes.

  Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists, and if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application.

  And if he manages to fill out an application he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of State law. And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write.

  For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin….

  What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.

  Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

  And we shall overcome.

  On the night of the speech to Congress, King called Johnson, who was back in the White House. “It is ironic, Mr. President,” King said, “that after a century, a southern white President would help lead the way toward the salvation of the Negro.”

  “Thank you, Reverend,” Johnson said. “You’re the leader who is making it all possible. I’m just following along trying to do what’s right.”

  “It is difficult to fight for freedom,” Johnson said as he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in August. “But I also know how difficult it can be to bend long years of habit and custom to grant it. There is no room for injustice anywhere in the American mansion. But there is always room for understanding toward those who see the old ways crumbling. And to them today I say simply this: It must come. It is right that it should come.”

  An echo of Lincoln, perhaps inadvertent but nonetheless telling. Lincoln had spoken of the tragedy of the Civil War (“And the war came”). Johnson now spoke of progress, of a brighter day (“It must come”).

  * * *

  —

  No one in the loop—including, almost surely, the man himself—knew whether he’d really do it. On Sunday, March 31, 1968, President Johnson was scheduled to address the nation about the Vietnam War at 9 P.M. He had a draft of a short section for the end of the speech announcing that he would not seek reelection in November. The president had talked about it with family and a few advisers, but the circle of trust was small after more than four years of tumult and war, and Johnson wanted to keep his options open.

  At one point that Sunday, Johnson stopped in his aide Marvin Watson’s office to talk about the race with Terry Sanford, the former North Carolina governor who had agreed to manage the 1968 campaign. “After spending all day at the White House,” Johnson adviser John P. Roche recalled, “Terry Sanford left for the airport still under the impression that he was the campaign manager.” Only a few hours later, on television, Johnson withdrew, solemnly drawling, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Roche couldn’t believe it. “I had already put an LBJ ’68 bumper sticker on my car,” he said, “and I was wearing an LBJ ’68 button. We were left with 15,000 of the goddamn things.”

  The watershed of 1968 was that kind of year: one of surprises and reversals, of blasted hopes and rising fears, of scuttled plans and unexpected new realities. The year began with Tet and cascaded into chaos: the deaths of King and of Robert Kennedy, the riots that engulfed many American cities, the calamitous Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and finally, wearily, the election of Richard Nixon as the nation’s thirty-seventh president. More than half a million U.S. troops were in Vietnam, and combat deaths occurred at a rate of about 46 U.S. troops a day, for a total of 16,899 that year. It was a period of disorienting violence, of disorder, of loss, of pervasive tragedy.

  * * *

  —

  The setting was splendid, the congregation rapt, the preacher at ease. On the morning of the same day Johnson made his evening announcement about withdrawing from the 1968 campaign, Martin Luther King was in Washington to offer a Lenten sermon at the National Cathedral. Easter was two weeks away, but King’s mind was more on the world beyond the cathedral’s splendid stained glass than it was on the details of the Christian calendar. Standing in the ornate Canterbury pulpit, gazing out across the sprawling nave, King summoned his listeners to the hard work of the Gospel.

  “We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,” King said. “And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”

  He would be dead before the week was out. History was moving quickly as King preached amid the hymns and the psalms of the Episcopal liturgy. In the shadow of the hilltop cathedral, Johnson was preparing for his evening address to the nation. And by the time Sunday worshippers gathered again in the sacred space of the National Cathedral, King would be martyred by an assassin’s bullet outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

  King’s earthly journey thus ended as his public life had begun back in Montgomery—at the uneasy but essential intersection of faith, politics, and history. His was a life lived between different, though sometimes overlapping, worlds: of black and white, of good and evil, of the kingdom of men and the kingdom of heaven. Buffeted by the demands of the present, King bore witness to a message that was, in Saint Augustine’s phrase, “ever ancient, ever new”: an insistence that the testimony of the prophets and the example of Christ could march from the past into what King called “the fierce urgency of now” in order to liberate the future.

  “Every man who occupies the position,” LBJ said of the presidency, “has to strain to the utmost of his ability to fill it.”

  King was not perfect, but then no man is. To know him is to know American history. From the bus boycott in Montgomery to the showdowns in Birmingham; from the “I Have a Dream” speech to the struggle for voting rights in Selma; from his antipoverty Poor People’s Campaign to his opposition to the Vietnam War, King spoke with the vo
ice of a prophet, urging a nation to repent and return to righteousness.

  The movement was about much more than King, but it’s a recurrent fact of history that human beings seek apostles who embody widely shared creeds. And in the battle against Jim Crow and for economic justice in the 1950s and ’60s, King was that apostle, and he will be a source of fascination and veneration as long as the American story is told.

  “We are tied together in the single garment of destiny,” King would preach around the country, “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”

  In that last Sunday sermon in Washington in 1968, King spoke of America, and of her obligations. To whom much is given, the scriptures tell us, much is expected—of individuals and of nations. “One day we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of things we’ve done,” King preached. “Yes, we will be able to say we built gargantuan bridges to span the seas, we built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. Yes, we made our submarines to penetrate oceanic depths. We brought into being many other things with our scientific and technological power.”

  It was a message that united politics and faith. King continued: “It seems that I can hear the God of history saying, ‘That was not enough! But I was hungry, and ye fed me not. I was naked, and ye clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and ye provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.’ That’s the question facing America today.”