Narrator: In March 2020, an elderly man, frail and battling a fatal cancer, made a pilgrimage. He stood at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, a place where, 55 years earlier, his skull had been fractured by a state trooper's club for the crime of marching for the right to vote. This man was John Lewis, and this would be his last march. As he walked, he spoke not of bitterness, but of redemption. "We were beaten," he recalled. "Tear-gassed. Bullwhipped. On this bridge, some of us gave a little blood to help redeem the soul of America." His life was a testament to the idea that one person, armed with unshakable faith and a commitment to nonviolence, could face down hatred and change a nation.

In his powerful biography, His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, author Jon Meacham explores the life and theological underpinnings of this civil rights icon, revealing how a boy from a sharecropper's farm became the conscience of Congress and a living embodiment of hope.

Narrator: John Lewis’s journey began in the oppressive world of Pike County, Alabama, where the "unbridled meanness" of segregation was a daily reality. Growing up on a tenant farm, he experienced the economic exploitation of the sharecropping system, watching his father sink deeper into debt no matter how hard he worked. This world was defined by stark, humiliating rules: separate drinking fountains, segregated schools, and the constant threat of violence for any perceived transgression. The 1940 lynching of Jesse Thornton for failing to call a white police officer "Mister" was a chilling local story that underscored the ever-present danger.

Yet, it was in this environment that Lewis’s moral and spiritual compass was forged. He found a unique outlet for his burgeoning sense of purpose in an unlikely place: the family chicken coop. Tasked with caring for the poultry, young Lewis began to preach to his flock. He would gather the chickens, deliver sermons, perform baptisms, and even conduct funerals. This was more than child's play; it was an early manifestation of his calling. It taught him responsibility, patience, and a profound sense of compassion for all living things, foreshadowing his later commitment to the "Beloved Community," a society based on justice and love for all. His trip to Buffalo, New York, in 1951, where he saw Black and white people interacting as equals for the first time, provided a stunning contrast to his life in Alabama and solidified his belief that a different, better world was possible.

Narrator: A single moment can change the course of a life. For John Lewis, that moment came through the speakers of a bulky radio in his family’s home. In 1956, he heard a sermon by a young pastor from Montgomery named Martin Luther King, Jr. King was delivering "Paul's Letter to the American Christians," a powerful address that framed the fight for civil rights as a moral and religious imperative. King argued that a Christian’s ultimate allegiance is to God, not to any man-made institution. Therefore, if an earthly law, like segregation, conflicted with God's will, it was a Christian's duty to resist it.

For Lewis, it was a revelation. He felt as if "a light turned on in my heart." King’s message provided the theological framework he had been searching for, connecting his deep Christian faith with the burning injustice he saw all around him. This was the Social Gospel in action, the idea that faith demands work to reform society. The murder of Emmett Till and the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott had already shown Lewis the brutal stakes and the potential power of collective action. But King’s sermon gave him a mission and a role model. He decided then and there that he wanted to be just like Dr. King, dedicating his life to the nonviolent struggle for equality.

Narrator: Inspired but needing a method, Lewis found his teacher in Nashville. At the American Baptist Theological Seminary, he met James Lawson, a divinity student who had studied Gandhi's techniques of nonviolent resistance in India. Lawson ran workshops in the basement of a local church, training students in the philosophy and practice of "Soul Force." These were not simple lectures; they were intense, practical training sessions for a nonviolent army.

In these workshops, Lewis and other students, including Diane Nash and Bernard LaFayette, role-played the brutal realities they would soon face. They learned to endure insults, cigarette burns, and physical attacks without retaliating. They were taught to protect their heads, curl into a fetal position, and, most importantly, to love their attackers. Lawson taught them that nonviolence was not passive; it was a revolutionary force that sought to transform society by "destroying and planting." It was rooted in the Christian concept of agape—a selfless, all-encompassing love for everyone, even one's enemies. This training was transformative, providing Lewis with the discipline and spiritual fortitude to face the violence that lay ahead. It was in Nashville that he learned to turn his anger into righteous, disciplined action.

Narrator: In 1961, Lewis put his training to the ultimate test by joining the Freedom Rides, a direct challenge to illegal segregation on interstate buses. The violence was immediate and savage. In Rock Hill, South Carolina, Lewis was the first to be assaulted, beaten by Klansmen for attempting to enter a whites-only waiting room. He refused to press charges, stating his mission was one of love. Days later, a bus carrying other Freedom Riders was firebombed outside Anniston, Alabama, its passengers barely escaping before it exploded.

The violence escalated in Montgomery, where a mob, unchecked by police, brutally beat the Riders as they disembarked. Lewis was struck in the head with a wooden Coca-Cola crate and left bleeding on the pavement. Despite the near-fatal attacks, the students from Nashville, led by Diane Nash, refused to let violence win. They sent reinforcements to continue the ride. Lewis, bandaged but resolute, rejoined the group. They were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and sent to the notorious Parchman Farm, a state penitentiary where they were stripped of their clothes and dignity. Yet even there, their spirits were unbroken. They sang freedom songs, their voices echoing through the brutal prison, a testament to their belief that, as King said, they could "wear you down by our capacity to suffer."

Narrator: John Lewis’s life was a continuous march, one that did not end with the passage of the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act. As he reflected in the afterword of the book, the victories of the 1960s were battles, but "the war for justice... goes on." He believed that the core message of the movement—that all people are one family in the American house—remained as urgent as ever. He saw the struggle for the "Beloved Community" as an unending journey requiring faith, persistence, and hope.

His first arrest in Nashville was not a moment of defeat, but of liberation, a feeling that he had "crossed over" into a new level of commitment. This commitment was to what he called "good trouble, necessary trouble"—the act of speaking up and speaking out against injustice wherever it exists. He believed that silence is not an answer and that every person has a moral obligation to act. His life's work demonstrates that adversity can breed unity and that hatred can give way to love, but only through conscious, sustained effort. The march, for Lewis, never truly ended because the destination—a world of perfect justice and love—is a goal humanity must always be striving toward.

Narrator: His Truth Is Marching On reveals that John Lewis was more than a politician or an activist; he was a man of profound faith whose life was a sermon acted out on the national stage. The book's most critical takeaway is that religiously inspired, nonviolent activism, grounded in the radical principle of loving one's enemy, is one of the most powerful forces for social transformation in human history. Lewis’s journey from a chicken-preaching farm boy to a civil rights legend proves that true strength is not found in physical force, but in the unwavering courage of one's convictions.

His life leaves us with a challenging question: In a world still rife with division and injustice, how do we find the courage to get in "good trouble"? John Lewis showed us the way is not through hate, but through a relentless, stubborn, and revolutionary love.