John Lewis ‘Note to Self’: ‘One day, you’ll be elected to the Congress,’ Lewis tells younger self

Arrested, jailed and beaten for challenging Jim Crow laws, Lewis became a national figure in his early 20s. USA TODAY

John Lewis was just 16 years old when he went to the library with his brothers and sisters to get a library card.

He was denied his card, and it wouldn’t be until decades later – after joining the fight for racial justice in the Jim Crow south, chairing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, winning election to Congress – that Lewis would return to the library for a book signing and finally get his card.

The Georgia lawmaker died Friday night. He had been suffering from Stage IV pancreatic cancer since December. He was 80.

In his July 2017 installment of the CBS series “Note to Self,” Lewis tells the story of his life as a message to his younger self. The 6-minute video features Lewis reading the note aloud, accompanied by archival footage and photos of Lewis through the ages.

Lewis was 23 at the March on Washington: His life in service to justice, in 12 images.

John R. Lewis, shown in 1963, died Friday at 80.

 (Photo: AP)

Read the full text of the CBS segment below:

Young John Lewis,

You’re so full of passion.

In your lifetime, you will be arrested 45 times in your mission to help redeem the soul of America.

In 1956, when you were only 16 years old, you and some of your brothers and sisters, your first cousins, went down to the public library trying to get library cards, trying to check out some books.

You became so inspired by Dr. King and Rosa Parks that you got involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Something touched you and suggested that you write a letter to Dr. King. You didn’t tell your teachers and your mother and your father. Dr. King wrote you back and invited you to come to Montgomery.

In the meantime, you’d been admitted to school in Nashville, Tennessee, and it was there that you got involved in the sit-ins. You’d be sitting there in an orderly, peaceful, non-violent fashion, and someone would come up and spit on you. Or put a lighted cigarette down your back, pour hot water, hot coffee, hot chocolate on you.

You got arrested for the first time, and you felt so free. You felt liberated. You felt like you had crossed over.

You probably will never believe it, but “the boy from Troy,” as Dr King used to call you, would become the embodiment of nonviolence in America.

Two years after you speak at the March on Washington, you will see the face of death, leading the march for voting across Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

You were beaten on that bridge. You were left bloody. You thought you were going to die. But you would make it. You would live to see your mother and father cast their first votes.

You’d also live to see this segregated nation you live in send an African American president and his family to the White House.

And guess what? Guess what, young John?

That some divine providence, as if to send a message down the ages, that man would be nominated on the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington.

And all of those signs that you saw as a little child that said “white men,” “colored men,” “white women,” “colored women”—those signs are gone. And the only places you will see those signs today would be in a book, in a museum, on a video.

John, thank you for going to the library with your brothers, your sisters, and cousin. You were denied a library card. Sad. But one day, you’ll be elected to the Congress. You wrote a book, called Walking With the Wind. And the same library invited you to come back for a book signing, where Blacks and whites citizens showed up.

And after the book signing, they gave you a library card.

I believe as Dr. King and A.Philip Randolph and others taught you – that we’re one people. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re white or ack, Latino, Asian American or Native American. That maybe our foremothers and forefathers all came here in different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.

John, you understood the words of Dr. King when you said we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters. If not, we will perish as fools.

‘Nashville prepared me’: John Lewis said of his first sit-in arrest 60 years ago

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