(Music)

(Voice-over) John Lewis: My friends, let us not forget

that we are involved in a serious social revolution.

We want our freedom, and we want it now.

(Voice-over) JL: When you see something that is not right or fair or just,

you have to say something, you have to do something.

(Voice-over) JL: It doesn't matter whether you're Black or white,

we're one people and one family.

(Cheers)

(Voice-over) JL: One person with a dream, with a vision,

can change things.

Bryan Stevenson: When people talk about you,

what do you want them to say?

[TED Legacy Project]

[Congressman John Lewis In conversation with Bryan Stevenson]

BS: Well, this is such a great honor for me to be in this room with you,

to have this conversation.

I can't tell you what it means to me to have this opportunity.

You represent something so precious to so many of us,

and I just wanted to start by thanking you for that,

for your willingness to wrap your arms around people like me

and to make me think that it's possible to do difficult things,

important things.

And I just want to start by asking you to talk a little bit

about that experience of growing up in rural Alabama

in the Black Belt of America

and how that cultivated this spirit that shaped your life and your vision.

I mean, you used to have to pick cotton on your family's farm.

JL: When I used to fuss as a young child,

I would complain, "Why this? Why that?"

And my mother would say, "Boy, it's the only thing we can do."

She said, "I know it's hard work, but what are we going to do?

We have to make a living."

But I was hoping

and almost praying for that day

when people wouldn't have to work so hard in the hot sun.

She was hoping also that things would be better,

much better for us as a people

and for my family.

My mother, she was always thinking ahead.

If we'd get up early and go and pick as much cotton as we could,

we would get more money,

because she knew the cotton would be heavier

'cause the dew would be on it.

So when it was weighed,

money would be increased.

BS: Your mother sounds really strategic.

JL: My dear mother,

one day, she came across a little newspaper in downtown Troy

that said something about a school in Nashville, Tennessee,

that Black students could attend.

BS: She encouraged you to apply for that,

even though that meant you'd be leaving the house, you'd be leaving the farm,

you would not be contributing that extra labor.

JL: Well, I was prepared and willing to go

to try to do what my folks called "doing better,"

to get an education.

But in the beginning, I wanted to attend Troy State.

BS: You wanted to desegregate Troy State.

JL: I submitted my application, my high school transcript.

I never heard a word from the school.

So I wrote a letter to Dr. King.

I didn't tell my mother, my father,

any of my sisters or brothers, any of my teachers.

I told him I needed his help.

He wrote me back

and sent me a round trip Greyhound bus ticket

and invited me to come to Montgomery to meet with him.

And I can never, ever forget it.

BS: You knew about Dr. King even before the boycott.

You had heard his sermon

the Apostle "[Paul's Letter] to American Christians."

It's the speech he gives to all the people in Montgomery

four days after Rosa Parks has been arrested.

At the end of the speech, he says,

one day, they're going to tell a story

about a group of people

in Montgomery, Alabama.

And then he says, of Black people who stood up for their rights,

and when they stood up for their rights, the whole world changed.

And you had an immediate response to that call to action.

JL: That message really appealed to me.

BS: Yeah.

JL: It was sort of a social gospel message.

BS: Yeah.

JL: I wanted to do what I could to make things better,

'cause when you see something that is not right or fair or just,

you have to say something.

You have to do something.

It's like a fire burning up in your bones,

and you cannot be silenced.

BS: That's right.

JL: My mother would have said to me, "Boy, don't get in trouble.

Don't get in trouble.

You can get hurt, you can get killed."

Dr. King and Rosa Parks and E.D. Nixon

and others that I read about at that time

and later met,

inspired me to get in what I call "good trouble,"

necessary trouble.

And I've been getting in trouble ever since --

the sit-ins, the Freedom Ride ...

BS: You went to Nashville

and began the work of learning nonviolence.

When did nonviolence become an essential part of your worldview

and the theology and the activism that you wanted to create?

JL: Growing up, I wanted to be a minister.

I felt that what Dr. King was saying in his speeches

was in keeping with the teaching of Jesus.

So I readily accepted this idea --

BS: Yeah. Yeah.

JL: ... of nonviolence, the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence.

We were taught to respect the dignity and the worth

of every human being

and never give up on anyone;

to try to reach them with kindness,

with hope and faith and love.

So you may beat me, you may arrest me and throw me in jail,

but I'm not going to engage in violence.

I'm going to respect you as a human being.

BS: And I'm wondering whether that is what gave you the courage

to endure some of that brutality.

Because a lot of people talk about nonviolence.

They talk about the theology of love.

But when you're on a bus

in Anniston, Alabama,

or in Montgomery, Alabama, as you've been,

surrounded by that mob and surrounded by that hate,

surrounded by people who you know are prepared to do violent things,

it's a different dynamic.

JL: Yeah. I accepted that.

Dr. King taught us to love.

It's in keeping with my Christian faith

to love everybody

and never hate,

because the hate was too heavy a burden to bear.

BS: But it seems like you were strategic, too.

You all thought a lot about when and where to go someplace.

It wasn't just, "Oh, here's an opportunity here, let's just do it.

JL: We just didn't jump up one day and decide that we would go to Selma.

We checked places out.

Wherever there was a possibility of leadership,

of creating a viral organization,

whether you had students,

people who were prepared to get out and work and organize.

And that's what we did.

We did everything that we could

to bring attention

to a situation that was not good for people

and then we could organize people.

There were religious leaders

teachers and lawyers and others in these communities and neighborhoods.

There would come a time through the training

and accepting nonviolence,

the philosophy as a way of living,

as a way of life,

that you become prepared.

BS: It was a lot of rigorous training

to be prepared to be in those very stressful situations

and maintain that commitment to nonviolence,

and I don't think people appreciate

how much work went into preparing people for that.

JL: Well, it was something that we became committed to,

a chance to go through role playing,

social drama,

pretending that you were beating someone

or knocking someone down,

someone's blowing smoke in your face

and calling you all types of names,

training people how to be disciplined

and not giving up.

On the Freedom Rides in May of 1961,

when I was 21 years old,

leaving Washington, DC, for the first time

to go on the Freedom Ride --

I thought we were going to die.

As a matter of fact,

I thought I saw death,

but I believe God Almighty kept me here for a reason.

BS: It's a powerful, powerful testimony,

the picture of you, and your head is bloodied,

this willingness to get back on a bus to do it again.

And they interviewed you after some of the sit-ins,

and what was interesting to me about the way you talked about it

is you were very clear.

You said, we're not just trying to do this for the Black people in Nashville.

We're trying to do this for everybody,

because they may not realize it yet, but what they're doing is wrong,

and I wouldn't be the Christian that I claim to be,

I wouldn't be the good person that I claimed to be,

if I didn't try to help them

get past this wrong thing they're doing.

I think people want redemption.

Our faith tradition,

we understand the power of redemption.

We preach about it,

and we understand that there has to be confession,

there has to be repentance.

But collectively, as a society, we haven't really embraced that

in this country.

We haven't really wanted to acknowledge the legacy of slavery

and the history of lynching and segregation.

People want to skip over the apology part,

and you still see these Confederate flags and these symbols of resistance.

It seems to me part of what is so urgent right now

is that we get people to have the courage to say,

"You know, this was wrong, and we have to reject that."

But you have seen that redemption in ways that I think has been

so extraordinary.

JL: A few short years ago,

one of the members of the Klan

who beat me and beat my seatmate,

in a little town

called Rock Hill, South Carolina,

left us lying in a pool of blood ...

Many years later,

one member of the Klan

and his son

came to my office in Washington,

and he said, "I've been a member of the Klan.

I'm one of the people that beat you and left you bloody.

I want to apologize."

His son started crying, then he started crying.

He came up with his son to hug me.

I hugged them back,

and I saw this gentleman three other times.

It's the power of the way of love, of forgiveness,

to admit it and say, "I'm changed," and move on.

BS: It does seem to me that if we can show people

that on the other side of repentance,

on the other side of confession, on the other side of acknowledgment,

there's something beautiful,

like what you experienced with that Klan member,

then maybe they'll find their courage

to stand up and talk about the wrongfulness of these things.

And I've been curious

how you would talk about what you learned

from your time with Rosa Parks and Dr. King,

what they taught you, what they left you with

that has allowed you to do the work you've done.

JL: There's something about these individuals,

they touch me, they reach me.

If it hadn't been for E.D. Nixon