Robert Greene II on David Greenberg’s *John Lewis: A Life*

David Greenberg’s John Lewis: A Life puts into sharp focus the life and legacy of one of the most important Americans of the twentieth century. A man born in rural Alabama who, through both the events through which he lived and his own personal moral convictions, became what many referred to as the “conscience of Congress,” John Lewis’s life symbolized larger changes in American society during “the American century.” The brilliance of David Greenberg’s biography is that it not only captures Lewis’ life and legacy, but firmly uncovers how the larger trends in American social, cultural, intellectual, and political history can be seen through the life of one man. Like the best of biographies, John Lewis: A Life is not just about the subject of the biography, but also the world in which he lived.

Greenberg, a Professor of History and Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University, adds his name to the growing list of biographers of the major figures of the Civil Rights era  of American history. The era itself is one of the most written about and explored eras in U.S. history among academics. What makes Civil Rights historiography so fascinating, however, are the many directions the field itself can go in. Does one try to go back in time, to make a case for a “long Civil Rights Movement,” as Jacquelyn Dowd Hall encouraged historians to do in the pages of the Journal of American History in 2005? Do we continue with the geographic and temporal expansion of what was the Civil Rights era, following the lead of historians such as Jeanne Theoharis, Peniel Joseph, and numerous others? Greenberg’s objective here is to not intervene in the historiographic battles over what constitutes civil rights history. However, what makes his biography incisive and compelling is that, throughout the text, you can easily see how he deftly responds to these concerns with a critical and enjoyable read about Lewis’ life and career.

This is mentioned because of the growing list of biographies about civil rights luminaries who are either advanced in age or, sadly, have already left us. Lewis himself wrote a memoir, Walking With the Wind, which was released in 1998. The three-volume graphic novel collection, March, has become a gold standard for how history can be told via the fantastic art and writing of comic books. Raymond Arsenault’s John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community, like A Life released in 2024, is another look at Lewis as a human being, an activist, and by the end of his life, a living symbol of the struggle for human dignity and freedom in American life. Arsenault, a historian of the Civil Rights Movement and noted expert on the Freedom Riders, also wrote a laudable biography of Lewis. In some ways, the two biographies compliment each other, with Arsenault’s expertise about the Civil Rights era shining through his work, while Greenberg’s depth of detail about many elements of Lewis’ post-Selma life making it a unique look into a part of John Lewis’ life often glossed over.

A reasonable question may be asked by the readers of this blog: what does John Lewis: A Life have to say to intellectual historians as specialists? The biography itself, it must be noted, is useful to read on its own if one wants to understand recent American history. But there are parts of the book that are especially intriguing to consider when one wants to think through the intellectual impacts on someone like Lewis. The chapter on Lewis’ time in Nashville as a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary and, later, Fisk University, plunges into what Lewis read and thought through as a student. In college, Lewis became a reader of “Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Kant,” and Greenberg notes that while Lewis “never mastered the finer points of Hegel” he eventually “start(ed) believing in a ‘spirit of History’” (21).

Viewing Civil Rights Movement activists as intellectuals in their own right has long been part of the historiographic development of Civil Rights history. While this is not the focus of John Lewis: A Life, it is something that Greenberg should be commended on including in his biography. Greenberg’s work also performs the laudable task of painting the picture of the intellectual mélange that someone like Lewis encountered on the campus of Historically Black Colleges and Universities such as Fisk, during the heyday of the Civil Rights era. Such schools were not only about educating Black Americans, but they were often finishing schools for men and women deeply committed to the messy, active, and critical work of being engaged and conscientious citizens.

A conscientious citizen is something John Lewis proved himself to be during his long life in the public eye. Greenberg’s biography captures, with great detail and dexterity, Lewis’ time as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). But what makes the biography especially intriguing is the look at Lewis’ life after he was forced out of the group leadership of SNCC in 1966. His time on the Robert F. Kennedy campaign for president in 1968, his leadership of the Voter Education Project in the 1970s, and early days as a politician in Atlanta in the 1980s all receive great detail, and make the book an important read for both scholars of the late twentieth century, and readers curious about the America that existed between the glory days of the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1960s, and the rise of Donald Trump in the 2010s.

Further, the book goes into great detail about the rise and fall of his friendship with Julian Bond. Bond and Lewis were terrific friends and allies during the Civil Rights Movement, but their bonds frayed during a memorable 1986 Democratic Primary in Atlanta’s Fifth Congressional District. Here, as in other sections of the book, Greenberg not only writes about Lewis as a political figure, but how he fit into a variety of social and political debates of the day. In this case, Lewis’ work with the Jewish community, and his alliances with them—according to Greenberg, he “always showed heartfelt sympathy for the concerns of Atlanta’s Jews”—helped make a difference during that 1986 run (366). Or, as Greenberg notes in both the chapter on the Lewis-Bond race of 1986 and later on, Lewis cultivated a reputation for being in favor of LGTBQ rights when even many liberals in the Democratic Party were unwilling to do so in public.

John Lewis: A Life goes far in showcasing how Lewis became a genuine stateman in the Civil Rights Movement and, later, in Congress. The book is a rich reflection on what “the American Century” looked like to a man whose people did not reap the full benefits of that moment in history. What can best be said about this biography is that it remembers that Lewis was more impressive as a flawed human being, than he ever could have been as a symbol locked into the imagery of the Edmund Pettis Bridge in 1965, or as a lion of Congress in the twenty-first century.