Review: The moral authority of John Lewis

“Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation” was the headline of the final posthumous article by the congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis. The religious language was a reflection not only of Lewis’s own personal faith but a reflection of his status in the United States, where for decades he had been called a living saint. With the release of John Lewis: A Life, by David Greenberg, “the saint” has received a biography that does justice to such a reputation. 

Based on extensive interviews with Lewis and hundreds of his associates—from his loyal chief of staff, Michael Collins, to former President Bill Clinton—Greenberg has produced a biography that, if not quite definitive, is still the gold standard by which all subsequent biographies will be judged. Spanning from the Freedom Riders in the early 1960s to the coronavirus, the book provides not just a biography of Lewis, but a canvas of modern American history. 

When writing about a man of such public acclaim as Lewis, one issue is avoiding blind hero worship, reducing him to a caricature. How can one not admire the son of sharecroppers from Troy, Ala., who spoke before hundreds of thousands at the age of 23 at the March on Washington in 1963—and who would later become one of the most influential members of Congress? Further compounding the issue is that compared with his contemporaries, Lewis in Greenberg’s telling seems like a less complex character, being essentially the same person privately as he was publicly. 

In his personal life, Lewis comes across as a loving father and faithful husband to his wife, Lilian. In politics, he stood by his beliefs even when they cost him and built friendships on both sides of the aisle. (A particularly heartwarming section shows Lewis teaming up with the Republican Sam Brownback to create the National Museum of African American History and Culture.) 

In politics, central to Lewis’s vision was the dream of a multiracial, pluralistic democracy he called the “beloved community.” That commitment had no tolerance for bigotry in any form. For example, when he once went to talk with a group of Black nationalists, they informed him that a white friend accompanying him was not allowed in. Lewis promptly left; he had been denied too many times because of his race to allow it to be done to another. 

He was a tireless advocate for the Jewish community and the gay community, meeting with members and raising awareness during the height of the AIDS crisis. And while he accepted no bigotry, he had no malice toward bigots, insisting they were just as much victims of the system as he was. John did not just say, “Love your enemies,” he practiced it. In 2009, he publicly embraced and forgave former Klansman Elwin Wilson, who had beaten him during the Freedom Rides. 

Greenberg avoids mythologizing the civil rights movement or its leaders. As in all groups, there were clashes of ego, jealousy and hypocrisy, the seemingly few exceptions being Lewis and Bayard Rustin. There was also a growing divide between the nonviolent, religious Southern wing to which Lewis was firmly attached (Lewis suffered from not just racism but the snobbery of some who looked down upon his “country manner” and speech) and a younger, secular and militant Northern wing that was angered at the slow rate of progress. The result was increasing militancy inside the influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, with Lewis increasingly out of step. The radicals could never appeal to Lewis. Not only did he abhor their disrespect for Martin Luther King Jr., but he also rejected the contention that the granting of further voting rights was only an illusion of progress—Lewis believed it was key to change. 

Occasionally he repeated some of their talking points to show he was still abreast of them, but his heart was clearly not in it. The result was his replacement as the head of S.N.C.C. in 1966 by Stokely Carmichael in what can only be described as a coup. (Lewis had won the first vote, only for the militants to stage another while he and his supporters were asleep.) History would soon vindicate Lewis. Carmichael and his group turned out to be poor political leaders, and S.N.C.C.’s decision to exclude whites from membership alienated many members.

Particularly gripping and sometimes harrowing sections of the book describe the Freedom Rides and Lewis’s time on Mississippi’s infamous Parchman Farm, where he and other activists were stripped naked, forcibly shaved and taunted by the guards. Other riveting parts are coverage of the March on Washington, of Lewis’s first unsuccessful run for Congress and of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary—where Lewis was torn between loyalty to his friendship with the Clintons and a growing sense he had to be on the “right side of history” with Barack Obama. 

Lewis’s relationship with the Catholic Church receives little mention despite Thomas Merton being an important influence. (Merton’s memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain, was one of the two books Lewis carried with him when he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.) Despite a lifetime in the Baptist Church, Lewis described himself as feeling at home in the Catholic Church, and one of the most important moments of his life involved another politician whose faith informed his work for social justice, Robert F. Kennedy.

Lewis became one of the senior advisors for Senator Robert F. Kennedy during the latter’s 1968 presidential campaign. He saw Kennedy’s campaign as the “beloved community” in action, as Blacks, whites, Hispanics and the poor flocked to Kennedy as the man who would make a more just and kind America. Fifty years later, Lewis called Kennedy “the man of hope, faith, and love.” 

In Congress, Lewis was not a master parliamentarian or a policy wonk; his true strength was as a moral authority, a living memorial to the civil rights movement and a reminder of the prevalence of racial injustice in this country. 

When Greenberg’s book reaches present-day affairs, he is fair and avoids sensationalism when discussing President Trump, although his distaste is obvious. While Lewis was already considered a hero, Greenberg notes that the final years of the Obama administration and the rise of Trump propelled Lewis to superstardom—with many seeing him as the perfect foil to the brash and divisive president. Amid rancorous politics, people looked to Lewis as a bright spot of hope that better times still lay ahead. 

One regrettable lacuna in Greenberg’s book is the absence of any material on the 2004 election and its aftermath. Lewis, along with 30 other House Democrats and Senator Barbara Boxer, objected that year to the certification of Ohio’s electoral votes. Many of the objections Democrats lodged against the 2004 election paralleled the Republican complaints in 2020. (Ironically, if the electoral votes in 2004 had been awarded to John Kerry, he would have won the presidency despite losing the popular vote by more than three million, the same as Donald Trump in 2016.) While Lewis did not take the steps some G.O.P. representatives did in 2020, it was nonetheless a low moment that only added to the toxic conspiracies swirling around elections. 

The book also includes a few mistakes. The men of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, for example, were not injected with syphilis; they had already been diagnosed with the condition, but were not told of their diagnosis and often misled that they were receiving real treatment. And while Greenberg states that between 1956 and 1992 Georgia’s electoral votes went to the Democratic presidential candidate only once, the state actually went Democratic three times in that period. 

These issues should not detract from Greenberg’s accomplishment. Those looking for a clear and balanced history not just of Lewis, but the civil rights movement and the United States over the last 60 years, have found one with this book.

This article appears in December 2025.

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