Notes on President Obama’s Eulogy for John Lewis

Delivered by former President Barack Obama on July 30, 2020 at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta.
Occasion: Funeral eulogy for Congressman John Robert Lewis (Freedom Rider, SNCC chairman, civil-rights icon).
Historic resonance: Same pulpit once held by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Audience referenced: Presidents Bush & Clinton, Speaker Pelosi, Rev. Raphael Warnock, Rev. Bernice King, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, members of Congress, Lewis’s family & staff, citizens nationwide.

Foundational phrase "to form a more perfect union" acknowledged as an admission of imperfection.
Each generation’s duty: advance the unfinished work toward ideals of freedom & equality.

Born to sharecroppers in Troy, Alabama – “modest means” → poverty under Jim Crow.
Childhood anecdotes:
- Hiding under porch to avoid cotton-field chores, dashing for the school bus.
- Listening to adults discuss Ku Klux Klan threats.
Mother Willie Mae Lewis’s maxim: education is irreversible ownership of the mind.
Inspirational moments:
- Hearing Dr. King’s sermon on radio as a teenager.
- Attending Rev. Jim Lawson’s Nashville workshops on non-violent civil disobedience while at college in Tennessee.

Nashville Sit-ins (1960):
- Well-dressed students endure milkshakes, cigarettes, kicks without retaliation.
- First major-city desegregation victory in the South.
Multiple incarcerations (“first, second, third … well, several times”) gave Lewis both hardship & strategy-affirming victory.
Interstate Bus Challenge (pre-Freedom Rides):
- With Bernard Lafayette buys two Greyhound tickets for an unsanctioned test ride.
- Driver’s repeated exits highlighted ever-present threat; no media coverage, no protection.
- Comparison to courage of youth (Obama notes his daughter Malia’s age).
March on Washington (1963):
- At 23, addresses 250{,}000 people; youngest keynote speaker.
Freedom Summer (1964) voter registration drives in Mississippi at age 24.
Selma → Montgomery – “Bloody Sunday” (1965):
- At 25, leads march knowing Gov. Wallace’s violent orders.
- Symbolic kit: trench coat, knapsack, book, apple, toothbrush (anticipating jail).
- Attack details: billy clubs, tear gas, skull fractured.
- Scriptural echo: “hard-pressed … but not crushed.”
- Media presence flips narrative; national outrage pressures Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson → passage of Voting Rights Act (1965).

Represented Georgia’s 5^{th} district for 33 years.
Mentored younger politicians including Obama.
Continued “good trouble” even in Congress—e.g., House floor sit-in on gun violence; arrests at demonstrations.

Obama draws direct lines from past racist figures to present-day injustices:
- “Bull Connor may be gone” → police brutality like George Floyd’s murder.
- “George Wallace may be gone” → federal use of tear gas on peaceful protesters.
- Literacy-test era gone, yet modern suppression: poll closures, strict ID laws, targeting students & minorities, undermining USPS during pandemic voting.
Democracy’s fragility: requires vigilance & participation.

John Lewis Voting Rights Act: restore & strengthen protections gutted by Shelby County v. Holder.
Additional reforms proposed:
- Automatic voter registration (including returning citizens).
- Expanded early voting & polling sites.
- Election Day as a national holiday.
- Full congressional representation for D.C. & Puerto Rico.
- End partisan gerrymandering → voters choose reps.
- If required, abolish Senate filibuster (termed “another Jim Crow relic”).
Moral imperative: combat cynicism; recognize suppression’s strategy is to seed hopelessness.
Quotes Lewis: “If you don’t do everything you can to change things, then they will remain the same. … You have to give it all you have.”

James 1:2-4 (perseverance).
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (“hard pressed … not crushed”).
Acts 18:9-10 (command to speak, not be silent).
Lewis compared to:
- John the Baptist (preparing the way).
- Old Testament prophets speaking truth to power.
Obama likens future acknowledgment of Lewis to a “founding father” of a more perfect union.

Young activists of 2020 George Floyd protests cited as Lewis’s philosophical progeny (“those are your children”).
Multiracial, multifaith coalitions echo Dr. King’s prediction about anonymous masses returning to “great wells of democracy.”
Courage defined as turning toward one another, spreading love & truth, embracing responsibility.

First meeting: Obama as law student expresses admiration.
Senate election: “I am here because of you.”
Inauguration Day 2009: hug signifying collective victory.
Final shared forum: Zoom town hall with young organizers; both leaders navigated new tech humorously.

Acknowledgment of America’s debt to Lewis’s moral imagination.
Charge to audience: “be more like John” → vote, speak, organize, love.
Benediction: “God bless this gentle soul who pulled [America] closer to its promise.”