Remembering John Lewis, America’s Pilot Light

Two stories about a man who always kept the faith.

Photo credit: Participant Media

“Without a doubt the greatest living American.”

YouTube comments are not usually where one finds a meaningful analysis of American history. Or a compelling argument. Or really anything of substance. But there, underneath a decidedly non-HD video of Congressman John Lewis giving a speech to what I think was a health care advocacy organization, was a line that said it all: “Without a doubt the greatest living American.”

I came across that comment sometime in early 2012, during one of those magical nights when the Internet manages to do exactly what the tech CEOs promise: deliver connection and inspiration, even joy. I was living in a studio apartment in Washington, DC, and working on Capitol Hill while taking graduate school classes in the evenings. I don’t recall what sequence of links led me to that video, which in turn led me down a beautiful online rabbit hole of John Lewis speeches. What I do recall is thinking, as I watched speech after speech, Why aren’t these the most-viewed videos on the Internet?

Here, I thought to myself, is Congressman John Lewis, a witness to and shaper of history, a leader of the civil rights movement, a friend of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

Here is the “Conscience of the Congress,” the youngest speaker at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Here is the man who had his skull fractured during the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge near Selma, Alabama — the bridge that still bears the name of a Klansman but that will someday be named for John Lewis — on the day that came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

Here is this crusader for justice, this soft-spoken man with the voice that could boom. Here he is with his humility and his deeply earned assuredness and his steadfast conviction, having long since surrendered to what he called the “Spirit of History.”

Here, on YouTube, is John Lewis, the John Lewis, sharing his stories, his passion, his determination, his faith, his lifelong commitment to the struggle for, as he succinctly put it, “freedom, equality, basic…