Encouraging voter education, participation, and local leadership
Lewis offers his thoughts on the role of voter registration within the civil rights movement at the time of the interview in 1973. As Lewis argues here, the emphasis needed to move beyond voter registration to include more of a focus on voter education and participation. According to Lewis, national and local race organizations needed to encourage citizens to vote and to run for public office. In addition, Lewis addresses the issue of leadership within the movement, stressing his belief that "indigenous leaders" would continue to be important to the success of civil rights measures. As elsewhere in the interview, Lewis uses Alabama as an example of what was happening in the South more broadly.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with John Lewis, November 20, 1973. Interview A-0073. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-
As white registration and participation is going down can you see black
registration and participation going up?
- JOHN LEWIS:
-
I think it will go up. It must ho up because on the other hand if you
have dramatic voter registration in the black community, highly
publicized registration effort that will also inspire, sure to inspire
white registration.
- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-
When do you think that you have reached of
participation and registration levels?
- JOHN LEWIS:
-
We would like to see all of the people of voting age registered. In the
South there's stil more than two and a half million blacks of voting age
that are unregistered. That may be probably impossible. Maybe it will be
almost impossible for an organization like VEP to get all of those
people registered. I think we can only do so much in terms of
registration. We get to a point and you have to have a sort of cut off
in terms of the registration effort. Even the
people that you get registered, there must be a continued on-going
process of political education. We have a situation in the South with
black voters and I think it's the same problem with white voters,
particularly low income white voters to a certain point.
Primarily with black voters who have been kept
out of the political process, they have been excluded. And some people
are registering and voting for the first time and they have got to get
into the habit of voting and the habit of participating. So I think we
have sort of an obligation or responsibility to follow through, not to
just any process of registration. To carry on some form of voter
education, citizenship education or citizen participation.
- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-
By that you mean identifying the potential black leaders and getting them
to run for office?
- JOHN LEWIS:
-
I don't think VEP can necessarily encourage people to run for office, as
an organization under our present tax status. But I do think that we can
create a climate, the situation where people feel that they should run.
I think we have an obligation to educate people to that pont where they
will go out and vote and not vote on the basis of race, but there are
issues involved and educate people to the duties and responsibilities of
a particular position.
- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-
Are there national organizations or statewide organizations or local
groups of blacks that tend to identify other blacks to run and encourage
them to run for office?
- JOHN LEWIS:
-
There is one group based in Atlants, the Southern Election Fund, on a
small scale it's trying to do some of that-to identify
communities where the potential for blacks being elected and trying to
identify some potential candidates.
- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-
Jack gave me a name of someone there . . . .
- JOHN LEWIS:
-
But you don't have anything like that on any type of significant
level.
- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-
There's some concern about that. Suppose if by encouraging a lot of
blacks to run for office or creating a climate for which they can do so,
you encourage people who are incompetent and then you have that
judgement to look at. My point is, when I came down South from
Michigan and worked in Louisiana and North
Carolina and some other places, the white politicians were sections of
the black community-was just that. it
was a modelitic structure and the top two or three leaders were
generally ministers or pastors. Then you had the key to
that voting block. In most stages where I have done studies
of the blacks I find there is no modelitic
structure. I mean, since there is no national leader, in many cases
there are no state leaders and what you have is
a fragmented structure. But you got a group of white politicians who
perceive it otherwise.
- JOHN LEWIS:
-
I agree with that. That's why I think it's dangerous. It is a danger for
any organization, for any group and hopefully VEP
will never get in a position of trying to suggest who should run and
who should not run. In the final analysis that candidate or that person
become elected must be responsive to the people that elected him. In the
state of Alabama we have various black political factions there.
We'be been trying to do some things there to
bring people together, the black leader in a particular city, state, or
on a national level. Even here in this city, the last election I think
destroyed the whole idea of a group of black people putting together a
ticket. And I think too long in the South, white politicians have placed
some their political future in the hands of a
few ministers of a few name leaders. They give them five hundred
dollars, two thousand dollars to put their names on a ticket and some of
these guys-even in a city like Atlanta- live from
one election, to theso-called black leaders and
church people live from one election to the next election by getting a
piece of money here and there. They are literally throwing their money
away.
- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-
Isn't this a reflection of what happens nationally since Dr. King? There
really isn't anybody identified in any national black organization as
the black leader. This fragmentation of power which really started in
'68 is now continuing and I guess you suggest it's going to continue and
instead of going back to just one or two national prominent or
state-wide prominent leaders you are going to continue to have more and
more leaders of the local level.
- JOHN LEWIS:
-
I think we are going to see a continuation of indigenous leaders, whether
on a local level, country-wide, city-wide. Local organizations will not
be necessarily a national plan or national strategy. It will not be any
type of national group coming together. In the state of Alabama for
example, you have the conference of black mayors under the leadership of
. You have the Alabama Democratic Conference
based in Montgomery with Joe Reed. Then you have the National Democratic
Party of Alabama. John Cashin and some of those guys would not sit down
in the same room together. John Cashin saying black people shouldn't
runas Democrats. they should run in the general
election on an independent ticket. Joe Reed and some of the other people
saying that they should run in the Democratic primary . . . .
- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-
Doesn't that seem to suggest that instead of solidifying the black
movement by electing more and more black leaders
- JOHN LEWIS:
-
I think more and more black people must be and will be elected in spite
of and divisions. And in my estimation, it might
beahelpful thing to have no one leader no
spokesman speaking out of Atlanta or New York. To have people dealing
with their problems in their own communitites, in their own
neighborhoods, in their own counties, in their own congressional
districts in all the states. I think black people too often in the South
during the days of the Civil Rights movement, got the feeling that some
Messiah is going to liberate them, going to free them. Some communitites
in the South literally were left untouched by
the the Civil Rights movement and they must start from scratch.
- UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
-
Didn't the death of Martin Luther King sort of frighten-up that
illusion
- JOHN LEWIS:
-
I think it destroyed it to a certain degree. The leadership and the
symbolic leadership of Dr. King, no question about it, played a very
important role. It gave many many people a great
sense of hope that change is possible but I still think too many people
in the South are waiting for somebody to come into their communities.