Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement Paperback – October 18, 1999

When news of John Lewis’s death came last year, I realized, despite my growing up during the time of the civil rights movement, I knew nothing about this great and beloved man. I lived an insulated life, aware of the movement, but truly knowing nothing in depth. I felt it a duty to myself to read about John Lewis, and I chose his Memoir of the Movement entitled Walking with the Wind. Lewis’s life and the work he did is remarkable. He was an incredibly dedicated man who believed in his cause and worked tirelessly, often facing death in so doing. He organized, led, and marched for the rights of Black citizens of the US. To criticize this man’s book is almost desecrating his legacy. But, nevertheless, I wish he had been able to tell his story in far fewer words. The book weighs in at just over five hundred pages. It is large format book, and thus it is heavy in weight as well as in message. At one point, Lewis is speaking of another movement leader. He says, “He was always the one who would throw up his hands and say people were just talking something to death here.” Frequently, I felt Lewis was doing just that as he tells his story and his philosophy. Lewis is fond of what I can only term the “extended thought.” For example, towards the end of the book, he is describing his campaigning door to door for an election pitting him against Julian Bond. He creates one paragraph, using two-hundred-forty-four words just to describe his going door to door. Perhaps in a shorter book, that might have had impact. But in a five hundred page book, a paragraph like that coming within twenty five pages of the end of the book is tedious. And that ending: Lewis spends over twenty pages delivering an extended “speech” about what still needs to be done in America. Yes, his words have meaning and have power, but after holding an incredibly heavy book up for roughly fifteen hours, I was ready for him to be a bit more succinct. It is perhaps wrong to say anything against such a great statesman, a man of conviction and principle until the day he died. But I do wish I could have gotten his message and followed the inspiring story of the movement in a tighter written, more succinct fashion. That being said, this book—written in 1998—is still relevant. His final remarks hearken to the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement and the need to continue working toward racial equity in our country.

Arrived in excellent condition and as described. Prompt delivery.

The junior standard-bearer for civil rights during the era of segregation recounts his rise through those times toward his own national recognition. It's an intimate and introspective offering. It's a unique perspective.After his Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, crashes, he self-imposes exile as an "invisible man" in New York working as a grant officer for a private charity:(p398) "New York was just too big for me. I didn't feel as if I could get my hands around it. In the South, communities seemed comprehensible, manageable, workable. You could see where things started and ended. You could get a grasp of the place and the people, as well as their problems. And you could respond to those problems with solutions that might work...."He always has the South on his mind where there remains "a spirit instilled by the civil rights movement that is still felt and remembered today, a spirit that was not and is not felt in the same way in the North. That, I believe, is the huge difference between the legacy of the civil rights movement in the North and the South. All the great battlegrounds of the civil rights movement were in the South. That fact is cherished and remembered by the people there." (p 208).There is confusion in "Feel Angry with Me". The chapter describes the fall of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. Their violent deaths in defense of the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law during Freedom Summer (1964) fixed the nation's eyes on racist brutality in Mississippi. The confusion is in character casting and mixing the ridiculous partying with his friend, actress, Shirley MacLaine and his virginity in the same chapter with the sublime. Here, especially, the book sacrifices continuity to rigid chronology.In and out of church - and on both sides of the pulpit - his cast of characters is most colorful, including a prominent one (not MacLaine) today facing bizarre criminal charges. So many stories within the author's story could make for a better book than a strict chronology.The author alludes to his motivation to influence the masses, (p 400) "I felt the spirit, the hand of the Lord, the power of the Bible -- all of those things -- but only when they flowed through the church and out into the streets. As long as God and His teachings were kept inside the wall of a sanctuary, as they were when I was young, the church meant next to nothing to me." Like a good, "whooping" preacher, he is, at times, poetic. But his book is not great literature. It is his personal and poignant gift and a legacy to non-violent social change.

Inspiration to the max!

Reading Lewis' autobiography "Walking in the Wind" is a transformative experience. As a child growing up in the sixties and seventies, I heard a lot about the horrors of the Holocaust, but the horrors of Jim Crow were given short shrift in U.S. history classes. What Lewis experienced in the Freedom Rides were nothing short of horrific. At one point, he and a fellow activist were locked in a hamburger joint. The manager had locked both doors and vacated the store except for Lewis and his friend, then turned on a fumigator. The room filled with insecticide and Lewis was certain he was doomed. Just luck that someone called the fire department, and they were narrowly saved from death. That is just one example of what he went through. Of course the walk in Selma has been shown over and over again, but there are many, many instances like that that Lewis somehow miraculously lived through. A true testament to courage, integrity, and love, Lewis is an American hero right up there with Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. They should have a statue of him in D. C.

Love this book will read it again and again

This is a superb book. Whilst John Lewis (currently a member of the Georgia contingent of the House of Representatives) isn't as well known as some of his contemporaries in the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s (such as Dr. Martin Luther King, A. Philip Randolph and Ralph Abernathy), his role in the struggle for equal rights for all citizens of the United States, regardless of colour of skin, cannot be underestimated.Born into obscurity in back-woods Alabama, son of two sharecroppers, the author found his voice in activism and the civil rights movement at a relatively early age. This led to his involvement with some of the key individuals in the movement, such as Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy and (fleetingly) Malcolm X. Lewis's main focus was the SNCC organisation, which was firmly on the side of non-violent action like sit-ins at food counters and getting people to register to vote. In doing this, he butted heads with some of the most unpleasant of segregationists, such as Eugene "Bull" Connor and George Wallace.I have read a large number of books on the civil rights movement over the years and this particular tome is one of the best. The chapter on the Freedom Ride from Washington DC to New Orleans is gripping and extraordinary; it leaves you out of breath at the end. It doesn't stop there, as Lewis later relates his role in the Selma to Montgomery marches and his beating at the hand of Alabama State Troopers. Despite all these negative experiences and the injuries he sustains, his passion for the movement remains undimmed and his tireless quest for the values he so firmly believes in continues unabated.The book ends the late 1990s, with the author firmly established in the House of Representatives and married with a son.It would be interesting indeed to read a revised version of this book that covered John Lewis's career up to the present day. In the intervening period, he has continued to fight for his non-violent beliefs, and it would be well worth reading his thoughts on the Iraq war and other such conflicts, as well as how he sees America today.

I ordered this book after I heard President Obama's eulogy but wish I'd known about John Lewis sooner. I thought I knew quite a bit about the civil rights movement but I was wrong. I find I'm having trouble putting my thoughts and feelings about this book into words so I'll just say that I'm very glad that I read it, I learned a lot and I found many reasons to count my blessings while reading it. It should be required reading in schools.

At times, very difficult to read - knowing how much has been done, but also how much remains to be done. Harrowing, heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful and inspiring.

Love it