The John Lewis story that has most fascinated me was how he nearly upended the March on Washington, by preparing a speech for the March criticizing the proposed Civil Rights Act as "too little and too late." (From the book "Nobody Turn Me Around")...
...the March on Washington was no hashtag-laden, social media-driven, decentralized spectacle. There was hierarchy. There was order. There was a "Big Ten" committee that forced Lewis to get on message, or go home...
...but Lewis was not only hesitant to comply on ideological grounds. He had a speech impediment, and he felt he couldn't deliver a completely rewritten speech without sufficient practice...
...but at the end of the day, A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King made sure Lewis relented. As King cleverly put it to Lewis, "John, I think I know you. This is not you."...
...you can watch John Lewis talk about that moment in this interview with Bill Moyers https://vimeo.com/70562136 

RIP
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