“We Want Our Freedom Now!” John Lewis, 1940-2020
John Lewis arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, on May 24, 1961, in the first wave of Freedom Riders to arrive in the state. He was 21, but like so many Riders he was already a veteran of nonviolent direct action. A member of the famed Nashville Student Movement, he had participated in numerous sit-in actions the year before. As a Rider had already been beaten and attacked, at stations in South Carolina and Alabama.
When I photographed and interviewed him in 2007, he talked about the role of the Freedom Rides in expanding the movement. “The Rides took the movement off of college campuses and out of selected communities, it took it to a much larger community. The movement became much more inclusive.”
Those of us in Nashville, that small group, we were committed to this idea of the beloved community, the redeemed America.
During our stay in Jackson and in Parchman, there was this commitment, almost a bond, that we would do everything possible to get everyone to adhere to the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. That we would not let anything break that.
But the Freedom Rides took the movement off of college campuses and out of selected communities, it took it to a much larger community. The movement became much more inclusive. People saw these young Freedom Riders–and some not-so-young–getting on buses, traveling through the South, which was very dangerous. So people were willing and and ready to become part of that effort.
So when people left Parchman and went to southwest Georgia and the black belt of Alabama, to Arkansas and eastern North Carolina and other parts of Mississippi, and stayed there and started working, it became a different movement.
These new people were not altogether grounded in the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. But they wanted to be part of this effort to change America. They has a degree of freshness and a greater degree of urgency. What I call militant nonviolence, or nonviolent militancy. These young people–and those not so young–were demanding change now. And by 1963, you had people in SNCC, even someone like myself, saying, “We want our freedom, and we want it now.”
