His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope

His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope is a 2020 nonfiction book by Jon Meacham about civil rights icon John Lewis. The book has an afterword by Lewis himself, who died shortly before its publication. Meacham is the author of several biographies, including one on Andrew Jackson (which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for biography) and one on George H. W. Bush, as well as other books on American history.

Summary

This book is not a full-scale biography of John Lewis but rather an overview of his life during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Starting with Lewis’s childhood and ending in 1968, the book focuses on the aspects of his life relevant to the African American struggle for equal rights, Lewis’s spiritual growth, and his involvement in the movement. Meacham chronicles events that took place in the southern United States, mostly in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. Themes include racism in the United States, the use of nonviolent resistance in the civil rights movement, and striving to create the Beloved Community.

Meacham begins with a kind of prologue, entitled “Overture,” that depicts the 2020 commemorative march over the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on the 55th anniversary of the original event. Chapter 1 describes Lewis’s childhood and upbringing through 1957, the year he graduated from high school. This chapter covers the origins of Lewis’s religious faith and his developing awareness of segregation and inequality between white and Black Americans. The second chapter details the years 1957 to 1960, when Lewis was a student at the American Baptist Theological Seminary and began his work in the civil rights movement. It was during this time that he met the two mentors who would have a profound influence on his life, Rev. James Lawson and Rev. Martin Luther King.

In Chapter 3, Meacham writes about the Freedom Rides of 1961, when Lewis and others in the movement tested the Supreme Court ruling that barred discrimination in interstate bus travel. They rode buses from Washington, DC, to Jackson, Mississippi, facing violent attacks as serious as the firebombing of one of the buses. Chapter 4 focuses on events throughout most of 1963, including the Birmingham, Alabama, demonstrations, Governor George Wallace’s refusal to allow integration at the University of Alabama (and the federal intervention to make that happen), and the March on Washington in August.

Chapter 5 covers the period from the late-1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy through the 1964 Democratic National Convention, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in August. This chapter traces the movement’s declining confidence in the political system. The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 was a high point, but the Democratic Party’s refusal to recognize an integrated group of delegates at the national convention led many to lose faith in the existing political system. Chapter 6 details the events in Selma, Alabama in early 1965, when authorities brutally attacked peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge, an incident that helped fuel support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act that summer.

The final chapter reviews the changes in the civil rights movement in 1965 and 1966 that caused Lewis to be voted out as the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Atlanta, Georgia. He’d remained faithful to the strategy of nonviolent passive resistance while many in the movement began to advocate a stronger stance. After years of violent attacks—culminating in the murder of four young girls during the bombing of a church in September 1963—many questioned the lack of response inherent to nonviolent tactics. Meacham then traces Lewis’s career in the following two years, describing his political work for the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy in 1968. The chapter ends with the dual tragedies of the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

In the Epilogue, Meacham briefly covers the highlights of Lewis’s career since 1968, especially his 33-year tenure as a United States congressman. The author underscores the importance of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, tying them strongly to Lewis’s work in the civil rights movement. In the Afterword, Lewis acknowledges the difficulties of the present day (2020) and exhorts a new generation to take up the cause of racial justice and use the overwhelming force of love to combat hate.