In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with David Greenberg, a professor of history and journalism at Rutgers University and a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at City University of New York, about his new book, John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster, October 2024). Greenberg offers a rare glimpse into Lewis’s life and the ways in which his childhood in segregated, rural Alabama, his religious beliefs, and his moral compass inspired his activism and his 1965 journey across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Through accounts of Lewis’s ascent to politics, Greenberg shares how Lewis came to be known as “the conscience of congress” and how experiences—both tragic and victorious—shaped a man and a voice that remain powerful today. An edited version of the conversation follows, and you can also watch the full video at the end of this page.
Why write about John Lewis now?
When I started this book in 2019, it was shocking to me that there was no full-scale biography of John Lewis. Since then, of course, he passed away. There were a lot of long obituaries and one short treatment of his life through the 1960s that was published in 2020. It was surprising that someone of John Lewis’s stature and accomplishments didn’t have a proper biography. So I set out to write one.
It’s the first book or biography I’ve written for which there was no distinct road map. We know the major events of Lewis’s life, but without a series of other biographies to rely on, biographers have to make their own decisions as to which events and incidents are important, and the topics that receive a lot of treatment versus what receives less treatment.
It was surprising that someone of John Lewis’s stature and accomplishments didn’t have a proper biography. So I set out to write one.
There was an immense amount of archival research, and there were approximately 275 people I interviewed. Using these resources, I was able to reconstruct not only Lewis’s early life, on which we do have considerable archival material, but also the congressional years where the interviews shed light and tell new stories about him.
Why did you find him more complicated than his public image?
Aptly, we think of John Lewis as the ‘conscience of the congress,’ as he was known in his later years. In the early civil rights years, we think of him as a man beyond courage, who was truly devoted to nonviolence and utterly unafraid to put his body on the line.
On more than one occasion, Lewis was nearly killed—because he was sacrificing his body—for the cause of equal rights, for civil rights for African Americans. That nobility, that sense of conviction and purpose, rightly aligns with John Lewis.
Aptly, we think of John Lewis as the ‘conscience of the congress,’ as he was known in his later years. In the early civil rights years, we think of him as a man beyond courage.
Therefore, it may come as a surprise for people to realize how much of a politician Lewis was and could be. For example, he paid attention to the polls because he wanted to serve his constituents. He went negative when running for office during a successful 1986 congressional campaign against Julian Bond, his best friend of 25 years. There’s a dramatic chapter in the book on that conflict. Another example is that people think of Lewis as a liberal, which he was. But he also worked with the Democratic Leadership Council, which, in the 1980s and 1990s, was trying to move the Democratic Party to the center to maintain viability.
Lewis even wanted [US Senator] Sam Nunn to run for US President in 1988. Even though his politics were somewhat different from Nunn’s, Lewis thought Nunn was the kind of guy who could win in what was then Ronald Reagan’s America. So he had a real sense that winning was important. He became an important part of the democratic congressional leadership, which involves learning how to strategize and to go negative—learning how to play the game of politics, at which he became quite adept.
How much did the Blacks-only childhood influence his life?
John Lewis grew up in an almost exclusively Black environment in rural Alabama, outside of Troy. He had very little interaction with White people. He would travel to Troy and have to eat outside the ice cream parlor as a Black person, whereas White people could sit inside and enjoy their treats. Also, at the movie theater, Blacks had to sit in the balcony.
From an early age, Lewis resented the system. Yet he never became a resentful person. He knew he wanted to fight segregation, and that was going to be an important part of his life’s mission, especially once he heard Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio. Hearing King truly inspired Lewis, who planned to model himself after the civil rights leader. King was only a number of years older but was already very prominent in Montgomery, Alabama, and nationally.
When John Lewis attended American Baptist Theological Seminary [now American Baptist College], a small Bible college in Nashville, Tennessee, he aligned with an interracial group that eventually staged very effective sit-ins at downtown Nashville lunch counters to force the desegregation of those lunch counters.
While engaging in those sit-ins, he learned that an interracial movement was necessary to achieve equality. This became part of his lifelong set of commitments. The song “We Shall Overcome” became an anthem of the movement and brought Blacks and Whites together.
Did he struggle to avoid hating those who hated him for being Black?
John Lewis was not inclined toward hatred or rage. Of course, he felt anger and hatred at times, like we all do. There was a sweetness, a gentleness about him that drew people in. Paradoxically, we often reflect on his steely fortitude and conviction. Consider a situation like Selma, when he was beaten while going over the Edmund Pettus Bridge and didn’t flinch. There are so many other examples of his unwavering conviction. Yet he also had a capacity to understand the other. Some of that understanding was deeply entrenched in his character. Christian religion provided a lot of support for that outlook.
Lewis was a boy preacher who was very involved in his family church in his youth. The teachings of Jesus really influenced him, and he became ordained while still a teenager. Then, as with Nelson Mandela, the teachings of Gandhi played a role.
A couple of years after attending college, Lewis began to associate with [reverends in the Nashville Christian Leadership Council] James Lawson, Metz Rollins, Andrew White, and a series of other ministers affiliated with Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In Nashville, they were teaching and preaching the doctrines of Gandhi and nonviolence, which appealed to Lewis. Their teachings aligned deeply with his beliefs and character.
What makes John Lewis still relevant in 2024?
John Lewis is still very much in our political culture and in our collective memory. As I wrote the book, I dove right in, without an introduction. I decided people would get a sense of Lewis and the book quickly, so I focused initially on his early childhood and his ancestry.
I end the book at a moment of choice for the American people. The year John Lewis dies, 2020, was the year of the COVID crisis, the year of Donald Trump’s first reelection campaign. It was also the year of the George Floyd protests. In the middle of all that, John Lewis, who learned he had pancreatic cancer the previous year, leaves this mortal coil.
So John Lewis, his legacy, and all that he fought for over so many years is still very much on the ballot.
What does success look like for you with this book?
Every author likes to sell books. Every author likes to receive good reviews. I want people to learn John Lewis’s story and learn lessons. Yet as a historian and a biographer, my question is, have I done justice to his life? Have I captured the man in full? Have I shown him to be not a saint—although he was very saintly—but a human being who was heroic in so many ways? Have I also portrayed him accurately as having flaws, foibles, and quirks? I want people to appreciate his sense of humor, his love of dancing, and his art collection.
Most people are not aware that Lewis had a phenomenal collection of African American art. Many were not aware of other aspects of his personal life, of his character. So I’d like to ask, “Am I doing justice to the man and giving a sense of how he played an important part in these very dramatic times in which he lived?”
Lewis played an important role from the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement through the political battles in the halls of Congress. Finally, I suppose, there is that question of how to affect the real world. But, honestly, if that had been my goal, I think I would have become an activist.
I hope that, indirectly, this book can inspire people to adopt a just and noble approach to life. But the book is not an activist road map. It’s a study of a man, his times, and a very important set of political contests that America has engaged in over the last 80 years.
The book is not an activist road map. It’s a study of a man, his times, and a very important set of political contests that America has engaged in over the last 80 years.
What did you leave out of the book?
I really tried to be scrupulous in my sourcing and in ensuring that anything I put in the book is completely true and verifiable. There were some details that I wished I could get but could not.
For example, I learned that as Lewis was sharing plans for his funeral, he named certain people who were to be invited and a few who were not to be included. I couldn’t glean exactly who those people are, but I have my suspicions. And there were other moments when I wished I could’ve gone back and asked him certain questions. I did have a few interviews with him, but he was quite sick when I was in the early stages of writing this book.
There were things I discovered or wanted to ask about that I came upon after Lewis’s death. So there are certain things that died with him. There’s a balance between wanting to respect privacy without surrendering your obligation as a historian and a biographer to paint as full, as rich, and as honest a portrait of the person as you can.
For example, I wish I could’ve obtained more insight into his relationship with his son John-Miles. John Lewis loved his son very much, but Lewis was in Washington quite a lot. His son was in Atlanta and raised primarily by Lillian Miles Lewis, John Lewis’s wife. But I got to know the private John Lewis better than I expected. For example, people have told me stories that are light and funny, but collectively, the stories reveal something about the man. For example, one of Lewis’s favorite things to do was to talk to children, school children who would visit the US Capitol.
Lewis had a terrible habit of going AWOL. He would be due for an appointment in his office, and he was nowhere to be found. One staff member told me, “We would listen for children’s voices echoing off the marble because we knew that that’s where Mr. Lewis was likely to be.” There was another story of a friend and constituent who would run into him on Black Friday at an Atlanta mall eating at Panda Express.
John Lewis loved to shop. Having grown up relatively poor, he became something of a real clothes horse later in life. Seeing so many different sides of him was an interesting revelation.
Watch the full interview
