Lewis in Galloway talk gives message of healing, redemption

Congressman John Lewis told an inspired audience at Monday that he remains committed to building the "beloved community" envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

A chief lieutenant of King during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, Lewis gave the school's students, parents and faculty a living history lesson, recalling growing up in a segregated rural area of Alabama, beatings he endured as an original participant in the Freedom Rides and as a leader of the March on Selma and meeting civil rights giants like Rosa Parks and Ralph David Abernathy.

The power of love, healing and redemption was the theme of his reflections on "community," one of the philosophical pillars of Eliot Galloway's founding of the school. Lewis' address was part of Galloway's speaker series. He represents Atlanta's Fifth District, which includes Buckhead.

"We are one family, we are one family, we all live in one house," Lewis told the gathering.

As the spellbound crowd listened in rapt silence, Lewis told of a savage beating he received in 1961 in a Greyhound Bus Station in Rockdale, S.C. He said that one of the men who beat him came to his office in 2009, seeking forgiveness. When Lewis said he forgave the man, they embraced in tears, Lewis said. They have seen each other four times since. "We have become friends; we have become brothers."

Lewis also spoke of reconciliation with former Alabama Gov. John Patterson, now 90, who battled Lewis' efforts to achieve integration. Lewis said Patterson recently invited Lewis and other civil rights leaders to lunch, and that Patterson played a key role in preserving the old Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery as a civil rights museum. He also said Patterson was instrumental in Lewis being named one of the 100 greatest living Alabamans, an honor he will receive Oct. 17.

Wearing the Presidential Medal of Freedom he received from President Barack Obama in February, Lewis said of the violence against him in the 1960s, "I thought I saw death; I thought I was going to die....My involvement made me a better human being. I'm not bitter; I'm not hostile." He said the beatings gave him empathy with all people, no matter their racial, ethnic or social orientation.

Turning his attention to the current situation, Lewis said "there's too much violence, too many killings at home and abroad." Without mentioning the war in Afghanistan, he said in response to a student's question," I happen to feel that war is obsolete." He was that the resources the United States is using to conduct war should be devoted "to build, to heal, to build a better sense of community."

In response to another question, he recalled the devastating effects of segregation, how his school had much fewer resources than white schools and how he couldn't use the public library. When going to the movie theater, he said, "we had to go upstairs, and all the white children my age went downstairs."

He remembered that King's children had attended Galloway, and saluted the school for being "the first independent private school to desegregate in metro Atlanta."

In an amusing anecdote, he remembered his youthful ambitions to be a pastor and how he used to preach to the chickens in his yard of his family's home..

"Some of those chickens listened to me better than some of my colleagues today in Congress," he said.