When John Lewis first came to this North Carolina town in 1961 as one of the 13 original Freedom Riders, a friend was arrested for trying to get a shoeshine in a whites only room.
Lewis returned to Charlotte on Thursday as a 26-year member of Congress and charged the thousands of Democratic delegates here for the final night of their national convention that the work of the civil rights era is not over.
“Brothers and sisters, do you want to go back? Or do you want to keep America moving forward?” Lewis asked.
Lewis was the only Georgian to speak from the podium at this week’s convention and was given four standing ovations in a 583-word speech. He touched on themes similar to those he made in 2008 when President Barack Obama was first nominated. His speech at the Democratic convention that year, in Denver, came on the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “March on Washington.”
Lewis was one of the 10 civil rights leaders to speak on the National Mall on Aug. 28, 1963, and is the only one still living.
“My dear friends, your vote is precious, almost sacred,” Lewis said Thursday. “It is the most powerful, nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union.”
But, he said, Republicans want to roll back ballot box access through voter identification laws and other procedural hurdles.
“Today it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting,” Lewis said. “They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote. … That’s not right. That’s not fair and that is not just.”
Republicans say voter ID laws protect the integrity of elections and stop voter fraud, although actual cases of voter fraud are limited. Lewis noted, as proof of GOP intent, that a top Pennsylvania Republican was caught on camera recently saying that state’s tough new voter ID law “is going” to allow Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to win the state.
“I’ve seen this before,” Lewis said. “I’ve lived this before. Too many people struggled, suffered and died to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote.”
The antidote, Lewis said, is simple.
“We must march to the polls like never, ever before,” he said. “We must come together and exercise our sacred right. And together, on Nov. 6, we will re-elect the man who will lead America forward: President Barack Obama.”
It was a day of honors for Lewis as he was first lauded by the Georgia delegation as a voting rights hero, along with the Rev. Joseph Lowery, Evelyn Lowery, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
“Many of us who are receiving these big titles, receiving these positions, sitting high, looking low, are doing so on the promises God gave Joe Lowery, John Lewis and Martin Luther King and the generation who paved the way,” Sharpton said at a brunch hosted by the Georgia Democratic Party.
“Don’t act like you earned your place,” Sharpton said. “Your place was paid for … by the sacrifice and the covenant made with them.”
Reed likened Obama’s re-election bid to the work of King, Lowery, Lewis and Sharpton in the 1950s and 1960s.
“In your quiet moments, you’ve thought, ‘What would I have done when Dr. King was alive?’ That’s easy to say. To imagine we would have done the right thing. You’ve got that moment right now.”
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