His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham

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His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope
by Jon Meacham

Author: Jon Meacham

An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Soul of America

John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” From an early age, Lewis learned that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality.

At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a minister, practiced by preaching to his family’s chickens. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it—his first act, he wryly recalled, of nonviolent protest. Integral to Lewis’s commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God—and an unshakable belief in the power of hope.

Meacham calls Lewis “as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first-century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the Republic itself in the eighteenth century.” A believer in the injunction that one should love one’s neighbor as oneself, Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful. In many ways he brought a still-evolving nation closer to realizing its ideals, and his story offers inspiration and illumination for Americans today who are working for social and political change.

[highlight color=”green”]Goodreads users review :[/highlight]

Based on this book Lewis was a man of Faith who put love into action without any violence though he was dealt violence and hate. I imagine as he crossed from this life to the next he heard, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” Matthew 25:23 I do believe he was faithful over a GREAT deal and he carried it out with humility and self sacrifice for others. What a legacy he left behind. Choose love, choose kindness and add this book to the must read list. Laura                                                                                                     rated it: 5.0 from 5.0

John Lewis is a civil rights icon. This book focuses on his struggles and triumphs in the 1950’s and 1960s. It’s a story and a journey that everyone should know about and find a way to incorporate in their lives. Was he a living saint? No, but he was an incredible human being who sought change through nonviolence and love. Think about it. Linda Rae                                                                                               rated it: 5.0 from 5.0