Then the film shows Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), almost 80, as he analyzes footage from his mid-20s the way a retired actor or sports star might dissect his glory years. Except Lewis is talking about bending the universe’s moral arc toward justice.
“You only pass this way once, you have to give it all you have,” he says to the camera.
So begins “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” a powerful 96-minute documentary of the legendary civil rights activist’s march from 1960s protests to a 34-year career in Congress. Set to debut on CNN July 3, the Lewis documentary is landing, unexpectedly, in another time of civil unrest.
Following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, racial justice protests have gripped American cities, with those outside the White House becoming a focal point.
Lewis’s voice is so relevant today, yet this documentary will help fill a void as Lewis still battles the stage 4 pancreatic cancer that he was diagnosed with in December.
He has not been on the House floor in months. He resumed voting only after the House changed its rules to allow members to cast proxy votes for those absent because of the coronavirus. Any 80-year-old man battling cancer is in the high-risk category of those who should not be traveling during the pandemic.
Each appearance now takes on greater significance. On Friday Lewis joined former president Barack Obama for a virtual town hall online. He did an interview Thursday with “CBS This Morning,” also from his home, telling Gayle King that his health was “improving,” but doctors were trying to get him to “eat more.”
Later that evening he spoke on a Democratic caucus conference call about the past week.
“It’s been hard and difficult for me. I’ve cried, I’ve prayed, I really thought that we were much farther down that road to redeeming the soul of America. We are not there yet,” Lewis said, according to a Democrat who requested anonymity to discuss the private call.
His acolytes now say that, in his absence, they feel a greater weight.
“What he deserves is that we all listen to the words he has spoken, and live those words, in the way that we lead and in the way that we think about our country’s potential. All of us, regardless of our race,” said Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), one of just three black senators.
“John’s voice is always going to be with us. It has never left us, it will never leave us,” said Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), a white Democrat who has joined Lewis at his annual commemorations of the Selma march.
An early scene in the new documentary shows Lewis on the campaign trail in 2018 trying to flip the House majority. “Don’t get in trouble,” Lewis recalls his parents and grandparents telling him. But, as he explained to the Dallas crowd, Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired him to change that mantra:
“Get in trouble, what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.”
Dawn Porter, the director, hoped to premiere the new film at the Tribeca Film Festival, then have it in theaters throughout the summer and maybe a fall appearance on cable TV.
Coronavirus disrupted those plans. The festival was canceled and theaters remained closed, causing delays. Yet, in some ways, it will now land with even more significance.
Starting two years ago, the crew shadowed Lewis, offering inside looks at life on Capitol Hill. The film shows him election night 2018, with his loyal aides at his side, as Democrats are declared winners of the House majority in the midterms. Those interviewed include Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and young political stars such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Lewis tells the camera he had never before seen the nonviolent training films from his days as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. These clips show how strategic the Freedom Riders were, plotting which cities and towns to target for sit-ins, marches and protests and how to act under the nonviolent mantra of King.
Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) missed a bus ride with Lewis to Spartanburg, S.C., one that turned violent enough that the current House majority whip believes it would have ended worse if he had been there.
“I was never as nonviolent as John was,” Clyburn, a friend for 60 years, says.
Lewis’s strategic thinking could be brutal. In the 1986 Democratic primary for the House seat that he still holds, he challenged his opponent — Julian Bond, a close friend who helped run SNCC in the 1960s — to take a drug test.
Bond viewed it as a racially charged move to win white precincts, which propelled Lewis to a 2,000-vote upset.
Porter, in an interview, said that footage made Lewis “more human” because he did something less than honorable. “What are the trade-offs,” she said, “you make along the road? And are they worth it?”
Lewis is mostly known for being the “conscience of the Congress,” as Pelosi calls him, but the documentary shows how he could use that star power to move legislation. One of the most conservative Republicans, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), praises Lewis for their work on the 2006 rewrite of Voting Rights Act.
“We can get important things done,” Sensenbrenner recalls, “by being bipartisan.”
Lewis’s annual weekends in Selma draw thousands and political stars from both sides of the aisle, none more symbolically powerful than on the 50th anniversary in 2015 when Obama walked on one side of the bridge and former president George W. Bush, who signed the 2006 voting law, on the other.
On Thursday, as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) faced questions about what legislation could quell police violence in minority communities, he recalled that 2015 trip to Selma with Lewis and the feeling he got “watching John Lewis introduce President Obama, of how far the nation had come in those 50 years.”
In an interview Thursday, Booker’s mind also returned to Selma, and how a white New Jersey lawyer watched that coverage 55 years ago and devoted his practice to helping black families get good housing. “That was the lawyer who helped us get into the house I grew up in, so from before I was born, John’s been shaping my destiny,” Booker said.
On “Bloody Sunday” Lewis tried to calmly talk to the top Alabama trooper on the scene.
In an all too relevant scene, tear gas fills the air and police move on the marchers. “I thought I was going to die on that bridge,” Lewis tells Porter.
Instead, 55 years later, Lewis joined Thursday’s call with Democrats and urged them to “be brave, keep the faith” and they would be rewarded, in this life or certainly the afterlife.
“There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land,” he said. “Let’s continue to work.”
