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4.5
When news of John Lewis’s death came last year, I realized, despite my growing up during the time of the civil rights movement, I knew nothing about this great and beloved man. I lived an insulated life, aware of the movement, but truly knowing nothing in depth. I felt it a duty to myself to read about John Lewis, and I chose his Memoir of the Movement entitled Walking with the Wind. Lewis’s life and the work he did is remarkable. He was an incredibly dedicated man who believed in his cause and worked tirelessly, often facing death in so doing. He organized, led, and marched for the rights of Black citizens of the US. To criticize this man’s book is almost desecrating his legacy. But, nevertheless, I wish he had been able to tell his story in far fewer words. The book weighs in at just over five hundred pages. It is large format book, and thus it is heavy in weight as well as in message. At one point, Lewis is speaking of another movement leader. He says, “He was always the one who would throw up his hands and say people were just talking something to death here.” Frequently, I felt Lewis was doing just that as he tells his story and his philosophy. Lewis is fond of what I can only term the “extended thought.” For example, towards the end of the book, he is describing his campaigning door to door for an election pitting him against Julian Bond. He creates one paragraph, using two-hundred-forty-four words just to describe his going door to door. Perhaps in a shorter book, that might have had impact. But in a five hundred page book, a paragraph like that coming within twenty five pages of the end of the book is tedious. And that ending: Lewis spends over twenty pages delivering an extended “speech” about what still needs to be done in America. Yes, his words have meaning and have power, but after holding an incredibly heavy book up for roughly fifteen hours, I was ready for him to be a bit more succinct. It is perhaps wrong to say anything against such a great statesman, a man of conviction and principle until the day he died. But I do wish I could have gotten his message and followed the inspiring story of the movement in a tighter written, more succinct fashion. That being said, this book—written in 1998—is still relevant. His final remarks hearken to the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement and the need to continue working toward racial equity in our country.
