Recovered history: John Lewis and Stokely Carmichael

The funeral of John Lewis was clearly not a wise place to raise this story, but Bill Clinton actually told the truth about Lewis and Stokely Carmichael. I was familiar with this because I was in SNCC when Stokely Carmichael showed up in DC and announced at  a meeting that whites were no longer wanted in the civil rights movement.

I suspect Clinton ran into a phenomenon that is gaining traction within the liberal community as it becomes better educated and more inclined to put symbols ahead of substance and analysis ahead of action. Increasingly judgement is being based on what people say rather than what they do. In the 1960s things were a bit different as John Lewis described it in an interview in 1988 at Washington University in St. Louis.

The fact is that being a leader like Lewis isn’t easy and it is useful to today’s activists to know how he handled problems like this one. From the interview:

JAMES A. DeVINNEY: Well there did seem to be some divisions of thought there, that, and some differences that developed within SNCC, that may have lost the chairmanship of SNCC, for you to Stokely Carmichael. And I know I may be hitting on something that's a little sensitive to you, but I wonder if you kind of talk to me, why you think you lost to Stokely in that election.
 
JOHN LEWIS: Well in 1965, ah, Stokely Carmichael, along with 2 or 3 other people did mention the possibility of challenging me for the chairmanship of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Ah, I was reelected in 1965, and continued to serve until the spring of 1966. I think it was feeling in, in SNCC, on the part of some of the people, like, ah, Stokely and others, ah, that they needed someone who would, ah, maybe not be so non-violent, someone who would be, ah, "Blacker", in a sense. That would not preach interracial efforts, ah, preach integration. Ah, I remember very well, in the spring of 1966, I had been invited to go on a trip, to speak to Scandinavian students, to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark about the Civil Rights Movement, about the effort to end the war in Vietnam. And, ah, when I came back, It was almost like a coup, ah, people were saying that we need someone who will stand up to Lyndon Johnson, we need someone who will stand up to Martin Luther King, Jr. Ah, I made a decision that it didn't matter what happened, I would, when I would continue to advocate the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence. Ah, that I, that I believed in the interracial democracy, that I believed in Black and White people working together////

 

JAMES A. DeVINNEY: John, you were beat over the head I don't know how many times, jailed I don't know how many times, and then you lose out on the chairman of SNCC, this must have come as a kind of personal loss, for you.

JOHN LEWIS: Well, it was very disappointing, you know after going to jail, ah, 40 times, being beaten on the Freedom Ride in '61, and almost facing death, during the march--the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, ah, to be challenged and unseated, to be reelected and de elected the same evening as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was a personal disappointment, it was a personal loss. But at the same time, ah, I said to myself, and to those supporters that supported me, ah, primarily southern students, "A great many of my White colleagues in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had to struggle with an ongoing struggle. And I was going to continue to advocate the philosophy, the discipline of nonviolence, and the sense of community, that all of us Blacks and Whites were in this boat together."

JAMES A. DeVINNEY: Stokely, of course in speaking Black Power on that march, on the Meredith March, how did you feel about that?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, I never, during the Meredith March, ah, that was the turning point for me. I continued to be a part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Ah, but the preaching, the chanting of slogans, ah, was never something that, ah, was easy for me to become part of. Because I felt during the Meredith March, ah, some of those in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, used the March to get the message, ah, get the words, to get the slogan of Black power across. It was empty rhetoric, it was not a message, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had a rich history of being involved in programmatic efforts and not just the use of slogans. It was at that point during that march, ah, that I made a decision to leave the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee