Oral history interview with John Lewis, November 20, 1973
Subtitle: interview A-0073, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Bass, Jack, interviewer; De Vries, Walter, interviewer; Southern Oral History Program; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Published: 2006
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; African American civil rights workers; Civil rights movements; African Americans; Civil rights; Race relations; Political aspects; Suffrage; Voter registration; Freedom Rides, 1961; Christianity; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)
Other titles: Interview A-0073, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with John Lewis, November 20, 1973; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: As the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, future Georgia congressional representative John Lewis was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement. Lewis begins the story of his involvement in the civil rights movement in 1957, when he left his family of tenant farmers in rural Pike County, Alabama, to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. While a seminary student in Nashville, Lewis began to participate in workshops on nonviolence and became an active and leading participant in the sit-in movement of 1960 in Nashville. For Lewis, the sit-in movement was substantial both for changing his personal views on the civil rights movement and for its ability to generate solidarity within the movement. Shortly after his introduction to civil rights activism, Lewis graduated and was ordained. Seeing the civil rights movement as "an extension of the Church, " Lewis devoted his energy to the movement full-time thereafter. In 1961, Lewis participated in the Freedom Rides through Mississippi and Alabama, and he offers an extensive overview of their purpose, the violent opposition the Riders faced, and the support they received from civil rights leaders and the White House. After the Freedom Rides, Lewis returned to Nashville, where he headed the Nashville student movement as a graduate student at Fisk University until 1963. That year, Lewis became the chairman of SNCC, a position he held for three years. In vivid detail, Lewis describes the major activities of SNCC during those years, focusing particularly on the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 and the voter registration drives in Selma and the subsequent march to Montgomery in 1965. Throughout the interview, Lewis situates the role of SNCC more broadly within the civil rights movement as a whole, speaking at length about the transition from religious to political leadership within the movement, the growing importance of voter registration and political participation, and the need for solidarity within the African American community (particularly at the local level). Additionally, Lewis offers his thoughts on the role of Martin Luther King, Jr., as a leader of the movement, focusing on both King's influence on him personally and on the movement nationally. Lewis concludes the interview with an overview of the tensions that began to develop within SNCC during his chairmanship, leading to his decision to leave the organization following Stokely Carmichael's rise to power and the shift towards the politics of black power in 1966.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 20, 2008).

Interview participants: John Lewis, interviewee; Jack Bass, interviewer; Walter DeVries, interviewer.

Duration: 02:00:42.

This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.  It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.

Text encoded by Mike Millner.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 168 kilobytes, 221 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series A, Southern politics, interview A-0073, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Jack Bass and Frances Tamburro. Original transcript: 67 p.

Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this interview.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements:  Web browser with Javascript enabled and multimedia player.