Decision of the United StatesSupreme Court batting segregation in public transportation. My street mate on that Greyhound Bus you must understand in 1961 black people and white people could be seated together. When you get out of washington to travel to virginia to North Carolina, alabama, mississippi, wewere on our way to new orleans. So we didnt have any problems for the most part until we got to rockville. And a little place in charlotte North Carolina, it was a sizable city, a young africanamerican man attempted to get a shoeshine in a socalled white barbershop that was in a socalled white waiting room. He was arrested and taken to jail. The next day the jury dismissed the charges against him but my seatmate and two of us arrived at the Greyhound Bus station in South Carolina and a group of white men met us in the doorway and started beating us and left us lying in a pool of blood and the local officials came up and wanted to know whether we wanted to press charges andwe said no , we believe in love and peace and the way of nonviolence. I didnt know at the time in 1961 that this man was ever wilson but years later in february 09 month after president barack obama had been inaugurated he came to my office on capitol hill with his son, the son had been encouraging his father to seek out the people of the world and he walked into the office and said mister lewis, efraim wilson. Im one of the people that beat you. Will you forgive me . I want to apologize, imsorry. The sun started crying, he started crying, i started crying. They hunt to me, i hug them back and i saw him for the last time. He recently passed but it demonstrated the power of nonviolence. The power of love. The power of the way of peace to be reconciled. Did he come to your office out of the blue . He did not come to my office out of the blue. He had been going around to different places in rockville South Carolina trying to find students that had attended the local college. Black College Students during the sitting in 1960. He gone around apologizing to them and a local press person there made contact with and he told them he had beaten some of the freedom riders so the press person started working with him and discovered that i was on the bus and that i was one of the people that was beaten. He said that man is john lewis. Hes in washington. Hes in the congress so he made his way to washington with his son. Another significant date you write about in walking with the wind. February 27, 1960, nashville, your first arrest. I will never forget that day as long as i live. 20 years old. We had been involved in nonviolent workshops studying the way of gandhi, the way of Martin Luther king jr. We had studied the role of civil disobedience and we had what we called social drama or roleplaying and hundreds of students and then sitting in. Youd be sitting there in an orderly peaceful nonviolent fashion waiting to be served and someone would come up and spit on you or put a lighted cigarette out in your hair or down yourback. Or either pour hot water or coffee on you or pull you off the stool and beat you and we were sitting there in an orderly fashion. Not saying a word, looking straight ahead. But reading a book, working on a paper and people start beating us and the local Police Officials came up and arrested all of us but not a Single Person that had been engaged in violence against us. That was my first arrest and that day when i was arrested i felt so free. I felt liberated. I felt like i had crossed over. Growing up in rural alabama i would ask my mother and my father, and parents and greatgrandparents about segregation and Racial Discrimination, about those signs saying colored waiting, white men, colored men, white men, colored women and i said why and they wouldsay thats the way it is. Dont get in the way. Dont get in trouble but doctorking and rosa parks inspired me to get in trouble so by sitting in , we were arrested and we went to jail. 89 of us were arrested on that day. Did you pay a fine or were you in jail for a while . We were in jail for a while. The local School Officials came down and bailed us out. That was my first arrest. That was my introduction to a southern jail and i tell people i grew up sitting down on those lunch counters stools and going to jail in places like nashville and birmingham, jackson mississippi and Atlanta Georgia and a few other places across the south. What was the ultimate result in nashville hired to the larger Civilrights Movement . The Nashville Community became one of the first major cities in American South to segregate the founders. They later desegregated all of its theaters and in nashville, we took the, we started talking about the beloved community of macon nashville and the open city. Nashville was considered the essence of the south and there were people in the white communities, very progressive. Really liberals that really wanted to see nashville make the great transition to a peaceful and open city. How did you get to nashville . I left rural alabama in 1957, 17 years old. Traveling by bus to study. I wanted to attend a Little School outside of troy alabama near where i grew up. I grew up 50 miles from montgomery, 10 miles from troy and i planned to go to a School Called troy state college, now known as troy university. Submitted my application and i never heard a word from the school so i wrote a letter to doctor Martin Luther king jr. And he wrote me back and sent me around trip Greyhound Bus ticket invited me to come to montgomery to meet with him but in the meantime ive been accepted at this college in nashville. So i went off to nashville, he gave me 100 bill, more money than ive ever had and gave me one of these big upright footlockers. I put everything that i owned in this locker, my books, my clothing and went to nashua and i literally grew up in nashville. It was there that i started studying philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. Who are shorty and sugar . Shorty was a name that my mother and some other of my father and my father called my mother sugar. What did they do . They worked on the farm in 1944 and i do remember i was for. I remember when i was four. My father had been a sharecropper, but in 1944 he had saved me hundred dollars and he brought hundred 10 acres of land and my family is still on that land today and on this farm we raised a lot of cotton and corn. Peanuts, hogs and cows and chickens. And i would be out there some days working in the field. I said to my mother thisis hard work. And she would say boy, hard work never killed anybody and i kept saying if i can just make it to the end of this row. And i complained working in the field like this is just like gammon, you spend all this money on fertilizer and plants seeds and sometimes you get too much rain and you dont know whether youre going to make anything or not and my mother would say thats all we can do. But as a young child when i was only 7 1 2, eight years old in the later 19, i would get up early in the morning. And get my book bag. And hide under the porch and wait for the school bus to comealong. To run off to get on the bus or to go to school. I didnt like working in the field that i didnt like being out there in the hot sun. I did get in trouble but they encouraged me to get an education at the same time, they needed me to work in the field. But it was i guess part of my first protest. Only on the farm it was my responsibility to care for the chickens and i fell in love with raising the chickens like nobody else. You write about that in your recent book march one. Its a graphic novel. In here you write about preaching to the chicken. As a young child i wanted to be a minister. I wanted to preach the gospel. So from time to time helping my brothers and sisters and cousins we would gather all our chickens together in the chicken yard and my brothers and sisters and cousins were lined outside of the chicken yard and i was still preaching but the chickens along with my brothers and sisters and cousins we had to make up the audience, the congregation and i remember well i fell in love with raising those chickens. The chicken taught me patients. They taught me hard work. They taught me not to giveup and not to give in. If you dont know anything about raising chickens on a farm, you had to take the fresh eggs and place them three long weeks for the chicks to hatch and you place them under here, from time to know him another hand was here and there wouldbe some more eggs. You would have the eggs that were already under here sometimes i would take these chickens and give them to another hand. You could take the checks and put them on a box with a lantern, raise them on their own and i was never quite able to save 18. 98 to order the most inexpensive incubator. This big catalog, some people called ordering books, other people called it the wish book so i have a child, it was my duty and responsibility to care for those chickens and i tell Young Children today some of those chickens never quite said amen but im convinced some of those chickens that i preached two in the 40s and 50s tended to listen to me much better than some of my colleagues listen to me in the congress. And there more productive. What would happen when one of the chickens becamesunday dinner . I would protest. I didnt like the idea of my mother and father or some relative getting one of the chickens and having them for dinner. It was probably my firstknown nonviolent protest. What is your most recent book on your life in this form, in graphic novel form. A staff person of mine back in 08, came to me and said congressman, you should write a comic book. Well, the way it all started the campaign was over and he was going to go out to the fandango to comic con. And another staffer started laughing about it. Youre going to a comicbook conference . I said to the staffer i you shouldnt make fun of him. You shouldnt laugh. There was another comic book that came out in late 1957, early 1958 i believe. And it was called Martin Luther king jr. At the montgomery story area published an Organization Called a fellowship for reconciliation. A pacifist group and i said that little sold for . 10 but influenced many of us in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement including the four students in greensboro North Carolina andmany of us in nashville. So this young man, andrew i , my coauthor came back to me and said congressman, you should write a comic book. And i finally said to him yes , if you will do it with me. But the rest is history. And the book has done very well. This is just book one which they have booked to and booked three, book 2 will come out in the fall of oh 14. John lewis in walking with the wind and in march but one. You write about june 1951 and a trip with uncle otis. I can never forget that, i had never traveled out of alabama. For. I would say 11 years old. And im remembering so well my mother and her sister and aunt of mine standing up late atnight. Bacon, pies and cakes. Frying chicken, wrapping in paper. Putting food andshoeboxes. For us to have something to eat. As we traveled from rural alabama through tennessee through kentucky. Two ohio on our way to buffalo. It was my first time out of the south. And i remember 11 years old in buffalo new york. It was my first time standing in the elevator, my first time seeing an escalator and it was so different. It had an impact on me. I saw black people and white people working together, living together. It was a different world. Why did you make that trip . I was there to spend part of the summer with another brother or my mother and aunt and some of my firstcousins. Another date in your history. September 2, 1986. Democratic primary. That was the election day in atlanta. In the six condensed Congressional District of georgia. That was the runoff. It was a very difficultrace. With a close friend of mine by the name of Julian Barnes who we had worked together in a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. We had been wonderful friends. He had served in the statehouse, the state senate. You wanted to come to congress and i wanted to come to congress. And it was a race that i never wanted to repeatone like that. You one. I won, i prevailed. Some people thought i didnt have a chance, that i didnt have aprayer. Julia was so wellknown. Not just in atlanta around the nation. I probably was better known outside of georgia and alabama and mississippi and other parts of the deep south where especially in nashville that spent six years as a student. How did you get to atlanta . I moved to atlanta during the early summer of 1963, 23 years old. I became the chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee better known as one of the major civil rights organizations. It was based in atlanta area i had just finished school and Fish University in nashville and spent four years at American Baptist college. It was called American Baptist illogical seminary and later became American Baptist college and i spent two years studying philosophy. So when i became the chair, i had to move toatlanta. I love nashville. I fell in love with that city. It was the first city i lived in but i went to atlanta and spent a lot of time traveling all across thesouth. Going to arkansas, southwest georgia. The Delta Mississippi and to louisiana. And North Carolina, South Carolina but atlanta presented me with an opportunity. To be the place, not just to be there but to come to washington to meet with members of congress, to come and meet with president kennedy with Martin Luther king jr. And others. A few weeks after ive been elected chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee i was in washington in the white house with president kennedy and i will never forget that first meeting with the president and then getting on a flight, flying from washington back to atlanta and preparing for the march on washington read that was 50 years ago. The were the big six. The day six were the head of the major civilrights organization. You had a man by the name of asa randolph. Mister randolph was considered the dean of black leadership. He was born injacksonville florida. A wonderful, wonderful man. Prince of a man and in some of those meetings he would say things likebrethren , lets Stay Together. Weve come this far together. Lets Stay Together and he would Say Something like if you cannot Say Something good about someone, dont say anything. It was so much respect for this man but along with randolph who organized the brotherhood of sleeping car porters. Represented the men working on the railroad. And when you come to washington, and walked through Union Station , theres a bus. As a randolph, he been honored. His own poster step. You had Martin Luther king jr. , young Martin Luther king jr. With the president of Southern RegionLeadership Conference born in Atlanta Georgia then there was roy wilson red head of the naacp. The National Association for the advancement of colored people that born in minnesota , one wonderful man and then there was this with the young area who was born in kentucky. With the dean of the school of social work Atlanta University and later became the head of the National Urban league and another man by the name of james farmer. Farmer had attended little waller college intexas. And he was part of the debating team. This Little School, this debating team evaded harvard and one. Later, the graduate study at Harvard University and became very involved with the naacp and later was one of the founders of the congress of racial equality and i guess im the six person. It was the six of us. Then president kennedy and late june 1963. In july 1963 you are planning the march on washington. And you write in walking with the wind, i saw for the first time during the july 1963 trip to new york city our meeting took place at the Roosevelt Hotel and it provided my first real lookat the personality of roy wilkins. I cant say i liked what i saw. He had held himself back when we met with the president here among just us wilkins was really asserting himself. We met in one of the Hotels Private dining rooms and from the moment wilkins entered the room, he came across to me as some sort of new yorker who thought he was smarter than the rest of the group. What was memorable about that meeting that day, much more than the details of planning the upcoming march was watching the dynamics among theparticipants. It was a real exercise in power and positioning in political rivalry. When williams entered the room a dozen or so people were waiting to take their seat