The Enduring Legacy of an Authentic American ‘Giant’
Activism fueled by religion guided Lewis’ life. In later years he worried aloud that some people failed to understand civil rights activism as an extension of faith for many participants in the movement, rooted in stories about Jesus and the words of Gandhi, who was born Hindu and embraced many teachings.
“In my estimation, the civil rights movement was a religious phenomenon. When we’d go out to sit in or go out to march, I felt, and I really believe, there was a force in front of us and a force behind us, ’cause sometimes you didn’t know what to do. You didn’t know what to say, you didn’t know how you were going to make it through the day or through the night. But somehow and some way, you believed — you had faith — that it all was going to be all right,” Lewis told PBS in 2004.
He was a human being who was willing to suffer and to die for his understanding of the Gospel, and how that Gospel found expression in the United States of America of the 20th and 21st centuries.
– Jon Meacham (American Historian)