During a recent lunch hour, the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery sat with a roomful of activists and absorbed the news that Troy Davis’ death sentence would not be commuted despite questions about his case.
“That’s typical Georgia, the state is 100 years behind the rest of the country,” he growled.
The aging civil rights icon seemed grumpy, so someone asked about an award he was getting that weekend from the Congressional Black Caucus, an event where he would be lauded by President Barack Obama.
“I didn’t know John was getting an award, too,” Lowery said of John Lewis, the congressman and civil rights hero. His voice rose with mock anger. “I thought I was the only one. I’m going to protest!”
It was vintage Joe Lowery, deadly serious one moment, laughing the next.
Lowery, who turned 90 last week and is being honored tonight at a gala event at Symphony Hall, has witnessed — and helped effect — seismic change throughout his life.
He was a compatriot of Martin Luther King who marched in Selma, boycotted buses in Mobile and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Council. He was a co-defendant in New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that fortified freedom of the press.
The rhyming, loquacious Methodist preacher has lived long enough to become the dean of the civil rights movement and give the benediction at the inauguration of the nation’s first black president. In fact, another hero of the movement, the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, died Wednesday at age 89.
He has witnessed great change in his nine decades but says he still cannot rest.
“Georgia is on my mind a lot,” he said. “I worry my state is on the bottom so much and on the wrong side of so many issues.”
‘World has changed’
Lowery’s signature is outrageous remarks punctuated by good-natured grins, and he freely dispenses both.
His tactics have changed little since the 1950s. The terms “Joseph Lowery” and “protest” have appeared together in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 388 times since 1983. Since 2005, there have been demonstrations against Walmart, the state’s immigration policy, the war in Iraq, police Tasers in Gwinnett County and, of course, voting rights.
Many laud Lowery for his longevity and devotion to the cause. Others say he is like a museum artifact that occupies a place of honor in the present but nonetheless belongs to the past.
Rusty Paul, a former Republican state senator and Sandy Springs councilman, said Lowery is “driving down the road looking through the rear-view mirror.”
“It’s tough when you’re 90 years old not to fight the old battles of your lifetime,” said Paul. “I can understand he sees it as a racial issue. That’s the lens he sees things through.”
Paul points to a lawsuit that Lowery and others filed earlier this year seeking to dissolve “super majority-white” cities like Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Johns Creek and Milton because, the suit says, the new cities dilute minority voting power.
But Paul notes that at least a quarter of Sandy Springs residents are minorities and that the referendum creating the city in 2005 passed with 94 percent approval.
“So a significant portion of those minorities voted for it to be a city,” Paul said. “He’s an icon and deserves all the respect he can get. But the world has changed. Who’d ever think there could be African-Americans as nominees of the two political parties [a reference to Obama and Republican hopeful Herman Cain]. Rev. Lowery’s life has been to make that happen.”
‘He’s being used’
Don’t get Lowery started on the subject of Cain, a black businessman from Atlanta who has become wildly popular with tea party activists because of his message of low taxes and small government.
“He’s being used,” Lowery said. “I think he has sense enough to know it. But he’s enjoying it. He’s a good excuse [for Republicans]: ‘We’re not racists, we got Herman Cain.’”
Portraying Cain as a stalking horse for conservative whites, particularly tea party groups, is a popular pastime among Democrats. Cain dismisses charges of racism among tea partiers, but Lowery is a steadfast opponent.
“If we give into the tea party philosophy, we’ll be in bad shape,” he said during an interview in his southwest Atlanta home. “The government is not the enemy. I see it as a referee, a judge and a caretaker, one that makes sure people get a fair shake.”
‘Good crazy, bad crazy’
The world in Lowery’s 10th decade bears little resemblance to the world in his first, or even his fifth. The discussions concerning race, politics and inclusion have changed. Once, the issue was starkly black and white. Segregation was evil, and there were strident villains to fuel the movement.
“It was easy to rally against George Wallace or Bull Connor,” he said, referring Alabama’s former governor and Birmingham’s heavy-handed public safety commissioner. “But the one we didn’t see coming was Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was the greatest force against economic and political progress. He kicked off his [1980] campaign in Philadelphia, Miss. Now he’s seen as a hero.”
Reagan’s appearance in Philadelphia, which first became known to the world as the place where three civil rights workers were murdered, has been a sore point among liberals black and white ever since.
In March 2007, weeks after Obama announced his candidacy, Lowery introduced him at a Selma church, invoking his oft-used “good crazy/bad crazy” speech. “Something crazy may happen in this country. Oh, Lord!” an exuberant Lowery said, before handing the microphone to Obama.
“He traveled the country with Obama,” said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, who has known Lowery for 45 years. “He said ‘Tyrone, there’s something about this boy.’ He said boy. He said, ‘He can go all the way.’ ”
At least twice, Obama has recalled Lowery’s “crazy” speech. Once, in 2009, when he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Lowery, and again last month at the black caucus awards banquet.
“There’s a difference, he said, between good crazy and bad crazy,” Obama told the crowd last month. “I was running for president. It was early in the campaign. Nobody gave me much of a chance. He turned to me from the pulpit, and indicated that someone like me running for president, well, that was crazy [laughter]. But he supposed it was good crazy.”
Calling out Bush
Others thought Lowery was the crazy one — and criticized him roundly — when he chided then-President George W. Bush at Coretta Scott King’s funeral in 2006.
With Bush sitting behind him and three ex-presidents in the church, Lowery said: “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction. But Coretta knew, and we knew, there were weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance, poverty abound. For war billions more, but no more for the poor.”
Weeks later, in Washington, Bush spotted Lowery at a ceremony. He stopped and smiled at the octogenarian.
“Thank God, I have the microphone today,” Lowery recalled Bush saying. “That is one of the things I admire about Bush. He has a great sense of humor.”
At the time, Andrew Young, the civil rights activist who became Atlanta’s mayor, disagreed with Lowery’s tack: “I don’t like to take advantage of people when they’re in your house.”
Young has known Lowery for 50 years. Last week, he said the episode was classic Lowery.
“He’s good at needling people for their vulnerabilities or sins,” Young said. “He always does it with a sense of humor. He doesn’t do it with anger or to put people down.”
Back in the day, Young was ordered not to get arrested during demonstrations so he could help those who ended up in jail. Lowery teased him unmercifully. Decades later, Young supported Hillary Clinton, not Obama, in the primaries. Lowery has never let him forget it.
‘Still in business’
Lowery was discussing the Davis execution at the weekly meeting of the Coalition for the People’s Agenda meeting, a ragtag collection of activist groups with him as spiritual leader.
On the agenda that day were classic “movement” issues: criminal justice, transportation, and voting rights. They discussed the upcoming metrowide sales tax referendum for transportation and its impact on black and poor communities.
“The more things change, the more things stay the same,” said Lowery of the recurring issues.
“We’re still in business because there’s enough blatant racism. There’s more black police but more racial profiling. There’s more blacks in the workplace but more discrimination, although its more hidden. It’s a crazy, mixed-up world.”
About the Author
