|
Friend,
John Lewis – civil rights icon, 17-term Georgia congressman, orator, preacher, author and one of the nation’s most formidable and unwavering fighters for racial justice – was a man of action.
In the indelible, era-defining newspaper photographs we remember of him in the 1960s, he is the 21-year-old co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; a Freedom Rider; the youngest speaker at the March on Washington; a courageous leader of hundreds of voting rights marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on a day that almost became his last. We remember the brutal photos of Lewis being mercilessly beaten during protests and the police mug shots after his arrests time and again during his long quest to secure freedom and civil rights for Black people.
In the quieter moments of his life, Lewis, who died of cancer in 2020 at the age of 80, collected quilts, which he “loved,” said O.V. Brantley, co-founder of the Atlanta Quilt Festival, now in its 15th year.
In the festival’s first-ever, traveling exhibit, named “Good Trouble Quilts – Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Congressman John Lewis,” about 30 original art quilts will be displayed at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC) from today through April 3.
The opening of the exhibit, sponsored in part by the SPLC, coincides with Jubilee weekend celebrated in Montgomery and Selma from March 2 through March 5 to commemorate the beating Lewis and other activists endured while marching for voting rights on what is known as “Bloody Sunday,” on March 7, 1965.
Today, the SPLC will hold a wreath-laying ceremony at the Civil Rights Memorial in honor of Lewis as part of the organization’s Jubilee celebration.
“John Lewis is a beloved individual throughout the country, but he grew up here [44 miles from Montgomery], and was very intentional to bring people to the CRMC,” said Tafeni English-Relf, director of the CRMC and the SPLC’s new Alabama state office.
Lewis led a nearly annual Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage to Alabama, sponsored by the Faith and Politics Institute, including a visit to the CRMC. Delegations of legislators on the pilgrimage saw places that were significant in the movement in Alabama.
“Because of the relationship the CRMC had with him, we are continuing to honor him,” English-Relf said. “The quilts show the artists’ perspective of who he was, built around him and his legacy in Alabama and his representation in Georgia.”
Read More
Sincerely,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
|
