John Lewis was very close to MLK and is still alive to this day. He is a congressman from S. Carolina, he has a scar on his head from beatings he received from Southern White's when he was on the Freedom rides. Freedom rides were where something like 6 blacks and 7 whites rode buses through the South, seated next to each other, shortly after the SCOTUS decision that segregated busing was unconstitutional. Whenever the Bus would stop, there would be mobs of white people, and the police would fail to protect them, while they got beaten up and nearly murdered just for simply sitting next to each other and merely challenging the racial caste system of the South.
He was also in on a march, I think it's known as Bloody Sunday, where him and several blacks attempted to march into Birmingham Alabama across a bridge, and the police on the other side of the bridge charged them with billy clubs and mounted on horses, it may be where he got the scar on his head. That guy could be a boxer with how much abuse he took in his protests across the Deep South, trying to get rid of Jim Crow laws.
Thanks to people like him, I can sit next to whoever I want to, even if it's down in Birmingham Alabama or Yazoo City MS. Im white, I don't have very many black friends (Actually I have 1 black friend which gives me the best automatic excuse to tell all my racial jokes about blacks) I live with a woman from Kenya in my household, but anyways, they did a real service for this country. Being born in 1985, well after the CRA of 1964 was passed, it seems entirely foreign to me that my black students in my school could of been entirely segregated from me just over skin color.
Good thread Burt Gummer, you are one of my favorite NWFA.com posters on here.
