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Editor's note: In celebration of Black History Month, I want to remember the legendary civil rights activist John Lewis who was born on Feb. 21, 1940, and died July 17, 2020. My friend Artie Ravitz met Lewis while he was a student at Penn State University. Ravitz witnessed extraordinary events while in the company of John Lewis. I met Ravitz while staying in Esperanza, Vieques, PR in January. Ravitz, 82, is a former toy manufacturer, who now devotes himself to writing about various topics including civil rights and crime. Here is his story:
By Artie Ravitz
I had seen the horrible beating of 300 citizens of Selma Alabama, and civil rights workers on the 6 pm TV news, on March 7, 1965, while attending a NY toy show. I was so upset that I told my wife Susie that I was leaving the following morning for the next Selma march. She stopped me by telling me that there would be no march tomorrow. Instead, I should call the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) office in the morning, to get word about the date for the next march. She was right. When I called the SNCC office, Constancia "Dinky" Romilly, the Northern Coordinator, promised that she would call me when SNCC leaders had spoken with government officials and had settled on a new date for the next march.
The march was the culmination of years of voting efforts, by SNCC and others, to conduct voting classes throughout Alabama and Mississippi. SNCC was a small civil rights group of students who led the student sit-ins in states throughout the South and currently were concentrating their efforts to teach voting in two of the toughest states governments whose officials tried to keep Black voter registration down to an absolute minimum.
In 1965, all SNCC efforts were focusing on one thing, getting the right to vote for all persons of color in the South. So, it was a big deal for millions of Black citizens of the USA, to see state officers and Alabama State Troopers, charging into the marchers, on horses and on foot, with clubs, assaulting and beating the marchers until they fell back and returned over the bridge to Selma.
I had been sending “care packages” to the SNCC voting rights workers who were only getting $9.00 per week for bare necessities of life, when Dinky called me back a week later. She told me that the new march would be the 20th of March, but that I should come directly to the SNCC office a day before, in Atlanta, and join the SNCC officers on their drive to Selma. I agreed to her offer. Dinky and I had been speaking for the past few years. Eight days later, Lee Harris and I drove to Newark Airport, jumped onto a plane to Atlanta, and took a taxi to the SNCC office in Atlanta.
We arrived there early afternoon and after greetings, we are told to wait in the lunch room and help ourselves to sandwiches until Dinky would tell us when we were leaving for Selma. Just before 4 pm, Dinky came in, telling us that everyone was waiting downstairs for us, ready to leave. Lee and I went down stairs and joined them. Lee got into an old blue Chevy and I got into the white '52 station wagon. Both cars left for Selma at the same time.
The Atlanta traffic did not allow us to stay together and soon we were weaving in and out of traffic, heading northwest. At one stop light, there was a cop looking into the car. That was when the short guy sitting next to my right, pushed my head down. A few blocks later, we spotted a police car nearby when the short guy sitting near to me again pushed my head down.
After the second time, I decided to ask him why he was pushing my head down. He told me that he did not want the cops to see me in a car full of Black guys. I found out later that the short guy’s name was John Lewis and he was the current chairman of SNCC. After we passed the police car, he explained to me that he did not mind being arrested when he was on the Selma March; but, he did not want to be arrested by some racist cop stuck out here in the “boonies”, where he could be forced to miss the big Selma to Montgomery march, and have to wait a few days until he got bailed out.
Three hours later, after having my head pushed down a few more times, we arrived at the small town of Tuskegee, Alabama, and a few minutes later, the entrance to Tuskegee College, in northern Alabama. The driver stopped directly in front of the dining room. When we entered, the SNCC kids were greeted as home town heroes. I learned later that many of the students here were SNCC summer voting rights workers. John told me that we stopped here because it was one of the few places where we could safely eat as a mixed group. After an hour discussion, a warm meal, and warm goodbyes from everyone, we jumped back into the car and headed southwest toward Selma.
When we got Selma, we again stopped at an integrated diner for a light snack. After we were done, none of the SNCC kids would get up to leave. Each asked the other to go outside to see if their car was still there. They were giggling and kidding about delaying our departure, but I didn’t know why. But after one guy finally, got up and left, we all followed him out. I was told later that the joke was about all of them being afraid to go out, since 10 days earlier Reverend Jim Reeb, a white minister, was dragged out of the restaurant, beaten by a white mob and dying two days later. Humor was their way of living with the grief of his murder.
The March to Montgomery started at 10 a.m. the following day. John Lewis was up front, of course, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other dignitaries and I was half way back walking with, talking to and listening to Joan Baez sing a few songs, and to Dick Gregory tell us a few jokes.
John Lewis held on to the chairmanship of SNCC for a few more years and participated in hundreds of demonstrations and arrested 40 more times until other more militant members took over the reigns of SNCC because the SNCC leadership got frustrated and in 1967, the organization's leadership was taken over by H. Rap Brown and Stokley Carmichael. The new leadership took a more militant path calling for “Black power” for Afro-Americans. They had many followers. The Black Panthers movement grew out of their efforts.
The big mistake the new SNCC leadership made was they began flirting with the Palestinian terrorist group who persuaded SNCC leadership to publish photos showing Jews shooting Palestinians, who had their hands up. But, as soon as the ADL ( Anti Defamation League ) learned of SNCC’s mislabeling of the photos, the ADL published the same photos, which had been taken 30 years earlier, but which were taken of German troops aiming at Jews with their hards up in the Warsaw Ghetto taken in 1944. This major scandal caused SNCC to loose 75% of their funding and forced them to close their doors, for good, a year later.
When Lewis was 17 years old, he went Montgomery to speak with Dr Martin Luther King for help him in getting into all white Troy State College, but although King offered to help, his family was against a law suit, so he dropped the idea. But, from that day on, Dr. King continued call Lewis, “the Boy from Troy.” After he attended a workshop of a follower of a Gandhi philosopher on non-violence, he joined CORE to participate in many sit-ins at Lunch counters, movie theaters, and businesses. He was elected to the board of the (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) SCLC in 1962, and in 1963, he organized and took over the leadership of SNCC.
But, John Lewis did not stop there. In 1963, he helped organize and spoke at the historic March on Washington where Dr. King gave his famous, “I have a Dream” speech for jobs and for an end of racial discrimination. And on Sunday, March 7, 1965, John Lewis led 600 members of Selma voting group over the, now famous, Edmund Pettus Bridge, only to be beaten back by brutal Alabama State Troopers with clubs injuring a hundred marchers. This brutal attack was seen in hundreds newspapers all over the world and became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
After leaving SNCC, Lewis took a job with the Field Foundation in NY City organizing voter registration campaigns all over the segregated South. He was successful in adding 4 million minority voters to the voting rolls, forever changing the voting landscape. In 1981 he was elected to the Atlanta City Council and in 1986, to the US Congress. He authored many bills favoring civil rights, lobbied for the poor, disadvantaged and was re-elected to Congress 16 times.
When Susie told me that John Lewis was speaking at Moravian College, we immediately decided to go and hear his talk. I called his office the following morning and spoke with Mike, his legislative assistant, telling him that I would like to speak with him for a few minutes. Mike agreed to give John my message.
The following Thursday, Suzie and I got there early enough to get two front seats in the auditorium. We listened to John’s speech about how he learned to speak by giving speeches to the chickens in his dad’s chicken coop and what his plans were for the following year in Congress. The auditorium was packed with his admirers and he got long lasting applause after his talk.
We went up and gave each other a hug and asked about each other’s health. We then spoke about the ride to Selma, and when he was pushing my head down so that the cops would not see me in the SNCC car. We parted again with hugging each other when saying goodbye.
It was quite a thrill for me to see him again and remember many of the things John went through to protect the rights of his fellow man. It was a great end to an early decade and chapter of my life; but for John Lewis, the fight goes on. John Lewis died on July 17th, 2020, of pancreatic cancer at age of 80. He left our world, as one of the top Civil Rights heroes of the 21st Century.
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| Michael Hooper & Artie Ravitz eat breakfast together in Vieques, PR |
