PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn is 80 years old. As a young man, he fought alongside the also young John Robert Lewis in an epic battle for the civil rights of African Americans.
Days before his friend and colleague on the U.S. House of Representatives was laid to rest, Clyburn reflected on how the nonviolent demand for civil rights was at one point sidetracked by a different style of protest that leveled homes and businesses in the inner city.
“They wanted to be more militant; in fact, their slogan became ‘burn, baby, burn.’ That was not John’s way,” said Clyburn in an interview with CNN.
Mike D’Orso, the Norfolk-based co-author of the Lewis memoir, “Walking with the Wind,” has heard similar concerns.
In a recent interview with WAVY-TV 10, D’Orso commented on the apparent lack of a formula in today’s Black Lives Matter movement.
“Good point — and that’s a question [now posed] by of a lot of people who were part of the movement back then,” said D’Orso.
In the three-time bestseller, “Walking with the Wind,” written in 1997 and published in 1998, Lewis and D’Orso explained the anatomy of the nonviolent movement — one Lewis fully embodied throughout his life.
When the soldiers of yesterday staged a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter, they were given instructions on what wear, what to say and what to do when they were attacked by an angry mob.
“They would role-play — five or six of them would pretend to be the white mob — they would spit at them, holler at them and — they would not urinate on them which eventually happened — but they went as far as they could to make it real in these training sessions,” said D’Orso.
Under Gandhi-inspired teachings, Lewis never fought back, even when his life was in danger. D’Orso explained how Lewis steeled himself to survive attacks.
“What he did with every one of these people he imagined the person as the infant they once were before the world had done whatever it did to them to make them what they are now. They were once that innocent victim and he kept that in his mind and had no hatred. I said ‘John I could not have done it,'” said D’Orso.
More than 50 years later, the nation is in turmoil again without the leadership of the last freedom rider.
“But when it’s someone like John, it wasn’t just John who passed away — he’s the last freedom rider– he’s the last of so many things,” said D’Orso.
