What The Nation Can Do After The Passing of John Lewis And C.T. Vivian

The Rev. C.T. Vivian and Congressmen John Lewis contributed to breaking the forms of white supremacy that reflected Jim Crow America. (Photo Credit: Atlanta Journal Constitution)

The recent passing of two civil rights giants must be instructive as we move toward deepening democracy in our nation. Democratic societies are implicit expressions of our moral prerogatives — the ways in which we prioritize what forms of ethical comportment is best for maximizing the fairest social and political outcomes for the greatest number of people. John Lewis and C.T. Vivian were American citizens well-aware of these powerful civic sentiments.

I had the enormous opportunity of working with the Reverend C.T. Vivian and Congressman John Lewis over the last twenty years, interacting with them from time to time, hearing them preach audaciously and marching with them over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma during the annual Bloody Sunday memorial weekends.

Each died within hours of each other on a Friday in Atlanta, the erstwhile epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement. Each taught me that faith and policy matters. Their fealty to the republic and their publicly expressed theological inclinations on behalf of democracy will not be forgotten.

I became engaged as an activist with both men as a young idealist who travelled to Selma in the early 2000s to work on unseating the long-time incumbent Mayor Joe Smitherman of Selma, who had assisted in presiding over Bloody Sunday in…