Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement [Hardcover]

John Lewis (Author), Michael D'orso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1998

Forty years ago, a teenaged boy stepped off a cotton farm in Alabama and into the epicenter of the struggle for civil rights in America, where he has remained to this day, committed still to the nonviolent ideals of his mentor Martin Luther King and the movement they both served.

John Lewis's life, which he tells with charm, warmth, and toughness, ranges across the battlefields of the civil rights movement -- Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, Mississippi. It is peopled with characters, including Diane Nash, Julian Bond, and Marion Barry; Bull Connor and Bobby Kennedy; James Farmer and Jim Forman; Malcolm X and Lyndon Johnson; Shirley MacLaine and David Halberstam; Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King, and many more.

From a sharecropper's farm to Nashville in the late 1950s, Lewis was swept up by the rising winds of the civil rights movement where he risked his life over and over, and went to jail many, many times. By the 1960s, he was steering the sit-in movement through the South, leading the "Freedom Rides", assuming the chairmanship of SNCC, and stepping into the national spotlight at the 1963 March on Washington. Lewis was in the "Mississippi Summer" of 1964, at "Bloody Sunday" in Selma in 1965, at Bobby Kennedy's side in 1968 moments before Kennedy was gunned down in the kitchen of Los Angeles's Ambassador Hotel. As a sixth-term United States Congressman, the highest ranking, black elected official in the country, Lewis continues the nonviolent struggle that has defined his entire life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

John Lewis is an authentic American hero, a modest man from the most humble of beginnings who left a rural Alabama cotton farm 40 years ago and strode into the forefront of the civil rights movement. One of the young people who brought the teachings of Ghandi and King to the lunch counters of Nashville in 1960, Lewis suffered taunts and threats, beatings and arrests. He spoke at the historic 1963 March on Washington and became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The nation, tuned to the nightly news, watched in horror as state troopers clubbed him viciously, fracturing his skull as he led a march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Today, he's the only member of Congress who can be proud of having been carried off to jail more than 40 times. With the help of a collaborator, journalist Michael D'Orso, this remarkable man has written a truly remarkable book. Walking with the Wind is a deeply moving personal memoir that skillfully balances the intimate and touching recollections of the deeply thoughtful Lewis with the intense national drama that was the civil rights movement.

From Publishers Weekly

Lewis, an Alabama sharecropper's son, went to Nashville to attend a Baptist college where, at the end of the 1950s, his life and the new civil rights movement became inexorably entwined. First came the lunch counter sit-ins; then the Freedom Rides; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Lewis's election to its chairmanship; the voter registration drives; the 1963 march on Washington; the Birmingham church bombings; the murders during the Freedom Summer; the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party; Bloody Sunday in Selma in 1964; and the march on Montgomery. Lewis was an active, leading member during all of it. Much of his account, written with freelancer D'Orso, covers the same territory as David Halberstam's The Children?Halberstam himself appears here briefly as a young reporter?but Lewis imbues it with his own observations as a participant. He is at times so self-effacing in this memoir that he underplays his role in the events he helped create. But he has a sharp eye, and his account of Selma and the march that followed is vivid and personal?he describes the rivalries within the movement as well as the enemies outside. After being forced out of SNCC because of internal politics, Lewis served in President Carter's domestic peace corps, dabbled in local Georgia politics, then in 1986 defeated his old friend Julian Bond in a race for Congress, where he still serves. Lewis notes that people often take his quietness for meekness. His book, a uniquely well-told testimony by an eyewitness, makes clear that such an impression is entirely inaccurate.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684810654
• ISBN-13: 978-0684810652
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #177,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best memoir I've ever read, January 24, 2000

By 

Tyler Green - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (Hardcover)

I don't like memoirs. They're usually self-serving, ego-driven and full of cheap shots. Walking With the Wind is none of those. John Lewis and his co-author have crafted a marvelously told tale of the civil rights movement. Perhaps no one but Lewis, King and Abernathy could write about the movement with this scope. Lewis was there for all of it, from jails, to voting, to sit-ins. And he describes it beautifully with the perfect pace.

I think the book's best chapters are the ones that cover what happened in Selma. I've read a half-dozen histories of the civil rights movement and none of them have recounted the Selma story better than Lewis does here.

Lewis also gives us insight into several other movement leaders. Not even Taylor Branch (the Pulitzer-winning historian and journalist) tells us about Jim Bevel with this much color. Lewis tells fascinating stories about Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael and the relations between SNCC and the other movement-leading groups. It's the kind of inside baseball a good memoir delivers.

I'm thrilled that I read this book. It has greatly contributed to my understanding of the civil rights movement.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great American triumph, August 3, 2000

By 

Eric V. Moye (New York, by way of Dallas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (Hardcover)

Uplifting. Eloquent. Brilliant. Inspiring. Patriotic.

John Lewis' life story is the story of a genuine American hero. The depth and strength of his moral conviction shows what character can accomplish. This book, just as this man's life, cannot be overrated or over-appreciated.

John Lewis, as a young man had the calling. His deeply religious upbringing ultimately led him to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and work with Rev. Martin Luther King. He sat in where Black people were not wanted. He demanded for Black people the rights to which all Americans have an expectation. He walked the walk at a time when it was not only unpopular, but downright death defying.

He moved from the pulpit to the halls of Congress, where he serves to this day.

As inspiring a work as I have ever read. Ought to be required reading by everyone in the Nation for a deeper understanding of the power of the American spirit.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The story of a true American hero, June 21, 2002

By 

Richard E. Hourula (Berkeley, CA. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (Paperback)

John Lewis was seemingly everywhere during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. From the Nashville Sit-Ins, to the Freedom Rides to the famous march from Selma and more. It is akin to someone having been at the Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Not only was Lewis there but he was an active participant, one of the many brave souls who risked injury, even death to bring down segregation. Lewis knew all the key figures in the Movement, such as Dr. King, and was a leader himself. Today, of course, Lewis serves his country in the House of Representatives.
It's hard to go wrong with such a compelling story to tell and Lewis doesn't dissapoint. With the help of co-author Michael D'Orso, we learn not only of one person's participation in the Civil Rights' Movement, but gain insight into the Movement as a whole.
Lewis is vastly under appreciated by Americans today. Hopefully Waking With the Wind will help future generations appreciate John Lewis, an American hero.