I want to share a story about Rev. Joseph Lowery today. It was by the grace of God that I got to know Rev. Lowery over the last twelve years. My initial interest in politics as a young boy was due to civil rights, and Rev. Lowery was an absolute lion in the movement.

Rev. Lowery helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, served as its VP under Dr. King and its third president. SCLC is arguably the most powerful, explicitly Christian organization for human rights and justice in the history of this nation.

Lowery was there in Montgomery for the bus boycott. He was the person who presented the demands to Gov. Wallace from the “Bloody Sunday” march. He was one of the principal American voices against apartheid in South Africa.

He delivered the benediction at President Obama’s first inaugural, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. David Garrow said of Lowery that he was “the most prominent survivor” of the Civil Rights Movement, “the human and symbolic link going all the way back.”

Rev. Lowery passed on March 27, 2020. Had he passed during any other time, the city of Atlanta would have been consumed with honoring his life and legacy. The Lowery family is planning a public memorial on what would have been his 99th birthday, October 6, 2020.

Had he not passed during a pandemic, he would have been honored as Billy Graham was, perhaps, and lay in honor at the Capitol.

Had he passed during the presidency of any person w/ the slightest sense of history, of honor, Rev. Lowery would have been saluted from the Rose Garden. His contribution to this nation would have received some expression of gratitude & recognition from the president of the U.S.

I have been quite sad about this. I have been quite sad that Rev. Lowery’s name has not been on everyone’s lips. But I have been moved by something…

The run-up to Bloody Sunday was a difficult time season for King. He was physically tired. He was tired of fundraising. He was off the highs of the Civil Rights Act, but he was now back in Alabama where his first major action took place a decade earlier.

The FBI had notified him of the most serious death threat on his life up until that point, and had urged him to take much greater precaution in his travels. Malcolm X had been assassinated. Jimmie Lee Jackson had been murdered.

It was Jackson’s funeral that brought King to Alabama on March 3 (Bloody Sunday was March 7). King spoke at the funeral and then led a march of over a thousand mourners through the rain to Jackson’s grave site.

Jackson was murdered by an Alabama State Trooper during a peaceful, non-violent protest for voting rights. He was a civil rights activist and deacon in his Baptist church.

Here’s David Garrow on the funeral:

“Come on, walk with me, Joe. This may be my last walk.”

I’ve been thinking about that “walk with me” spirit as we’ve seen peaceful protests across the nation over these past weeks. I thought about that spirit yesterday as I saw reports of Asian-American Christians marching through Chicago’s Chinatown for justice.

I thought about it as AND Campaign has participated and helped lead actions over the past several months. I’ve thought about how proud Rev. Lowery would have been to see Barack Obama, his friend, walk in that spirit. How maybe he'd see himself in someone like @MsPackyetti.

One thing that hasn’t been pointed out to my knowledge is that when Joe Biden says he wants to restore the soul of America, that didn’t just come out of nowhere.

That idea that public service is about helping America live up to its best ideals, even if it’s never fully lived up to them before, the idea that we’re certainly better than this…that we can be better…that’s Rev. Lowery’s legacy. Literally.

In 1956, as plans for what would become the SCLC were developing, King described its purpose would be to "awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority,” not to defeat white oppressors:

“The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of a beloved community.” (Gary Dorrien, Plough) https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/racial-justice/redeeming-the-soul-of-america

By 1957, the effort had a name, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Its purpose? “To Redeem the Soul of America.”

Days before King’s death, as he met with his top aides, it was Lowery who noted, “The Holy Spirit is in this room.” Lowery was a Holy Spirit preacher, with a “walk with me” spirit.

I’ve been working for the last several years to advance a vision of civic engagement where burden-carrying is central. Lowery embodied that model. His life is one reason I don’t think it’s a naive notion. His life is one we should study & celebrate. We should be grateful for it.

/end/