April 15, 2010

Some tea party activists taunt a true hero

Dwight Lewis
The Tennessean

They remind me of a little child: "I didn't do it, Mama. I didn't do it, Daddy.''

I'm talking about the actions of some conservative activists. What
they did in Washington recently is sickening, and what's even more sickening is the fact that they will not own up to what they did. News reports say that back on March 20, when U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, Andre Carson of Indiana and Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri - all three African-American and Democrats - were walking through a crowd of thousands of angry protesters outside the Capitol on their way to a final debate on health-care reform, a number of racial slurs, including the N-word, were shouted at them.

But conservative activists say the lawmakers are lying. To prove it, they posted a video on YouTube in an attempt to show the racial epithets did not occur. Only problem is, an Associated Press analysis found that the video is of the lawmakers passing through the crowd later, when they left the Capitol, and not when they were entering it. Related National Tea Party rally criticizes 'gangster government' Still, conservative activists deny the slurs occurred. Andrew Breitbart, the Web entrepreneur who released the video of ACORN workers counseling actors posing as a pimp and prostitute, told AP, "even a racist is media-savvy enough not to yell the N-word.'' Hey, I wouldn't bet on that, especially not when some people get hot under the collar and think their rights are being taken away by a president who doesn't look like most of them.

But I would bet the farm or my last dollar that the conservative activists have it dead wrong when they say John Lewis is lying. Not the John Lewis I know and have known for some 45 years. Not the John Lewis who is an American hero. Not the John Lewis who is an American treasure. Not the John Lewis who is a "living saint.'' A native of Alabama, Lewis "grew up'' in Nashville, going to school at Fisk University and American Baptist Theological Seminary. He put his life on the line trying to integrate lunch counters here 50 years ago. He also put his life on the line in the early 1960s as a Freedom Rider trying to desegregate public bus terminals throughout the South, and he was almost beaten to death in 1965 as he and others attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., as they tried to make their way to Montgomery in support of voter rights for all eligible Americans.

No, John Lewis wouldn't lie about anything. "I grew up in a very religious home with my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and my family and extended family, … my grandparents and great-grandparents, he picked cotton, corn and peanuts,'' John Lewis told me in 1998.

So, no, John Lewis wouldn't lie about somebody using the N-word toward him. It ain't so. And while it ain't so, I have a message for Breitbart and those who were in that crowd of protesters March 20: Apologize for using the N-word that day. Admit that you were wrong and ask to be forgiven. I'm sure John Lewis, if nobody else, will forgive you. He did that in February 2009 when Elwin Wilson went to Lewis' Washington office from his Rock Hill, S.C., home to apologize to the congressman for being among a group of whites who attacked Lewis and other Freedom Riders in 1961. Related National Tea Party rally criticizes 'gangster government' "I told the congressman I'm sorry,'' Wilson, then 72 and a disabled veteran of the Korean War, told me over the telephone a couple of days after his apology. "I told him I wish I could take steps backward instead of forward.'' Wilson manned up for his mistake. I hope those conservative activists who used racial slurs on Capitol Hill in March will be man enough to do the same thing. If they do that, I'm sure it will help them sleep better at night.