Let justice roll down like water, righteousness like a mighty stream.
For our grandsons and granddaughters remember to remember the dream
Welcome to Songs and Stories from Home as we continue to Remember the Dream. This week Selma.
On Sunday the 26th of July in 2020 Representative John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama one last time. His flag-draped casket pulled by a pair of horses rolling atop a carpet of rose petals, his family following on foot for this, his final crossing.
Fifty-five years earlier on the first Sunday in March a twenty-five-year-old John Lewis led a line of protestors across that bridge hoping to walk the 54 miles to the steps of the state capitol in Montgomery and make the case to the governor that the right to vote should belong to everyone.
They didn’t make it to the county line on the other side of the bridge before being attacked by state troopers many of them on horseback deploying tear gas and batons. John Lewis, gassed and beaten, said he thought he saw death that morning.
The scenes of the carnage were so horrific and the right to vote viewed as so universally American that eight days later the President of the United States addressed a joint session of Congress saying it was time for all Americans to be given the right to vote. The Congress agreed and five months later universal voting became the law of land.
Ever since that monumental moment certain groups have never stopped doing everything they can think of to limit that right. Now there are new protests in the street this time protesting the criminal justice system and systemic racism that has never been finally and fully addressed by this country. What is different in this summer of 2020 is that now it’s the President of the United States who is doing what he can to limit voting and who is condoning the use of tear gas and the use of a secret paramilitary force against protestors.
John Lewis believed in America. He spent a lifetime working toward a better America. He believed in non-violent civil disobedience, what he called good trouble. He also believed the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. He believed in the beloved community. His faith continues to inspire, to inspire me, and gives me hope that as a country we may somehow cross that bridge together and make true our promise and our pledge of liberty and justice for all.
Let justice roll down like water, righteousness like a mighty stream.
For our grandsons and granddaughters remember to remember the dream
