Good Trouble, Still Needed: Honoring John Lewis This Black History Month

Atlanta, GA – For John Lewis, justice was never abstract — it was personal. Born February 21, 1940, in rural Alabama to sharecroppers, Lewis grew up in the segregated South, where racism shaped daily life. As a child picking cotton on his family’s farm, he dreamed of becoming a pastor and preached sermons to the chickens he tended, inspired by the words of Martin Luther King Jr. echoing from the radio.

By the time he was a college student at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Lewis was no longer just listening — he was acting. He helped organize lunch counter sit-ins challenging segregated restaurants and accepted arrest as the price of confronting injustice. He called it getting into “good trouble” — necessary trouble in the pursuit of justice.

In 1961, Lewis became one of the original Freedom Riders, traveling by bus across the South to test federal desegregation laws. Mobs attacked the riders; one bus was firebombed outside Anniston, Alabama. Lewis was beaten and jailed, but he did not back down.

At just 25 years old, he led 600 peaceful marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965 — a day remembered as Bloody Sunday. State troopers met them with tear gas and batons. Lewis was beaten unconscious. Televised images of the violence shocked the nation and galvanized support for voting rights. Months later, Congress passed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, outlawing many discriminatory barriers that had prevented Black Americans from voting.

Lewis carried that same spirit of “good trouble” into public office. In 1987, he was elected to represent Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served for more than three decades until his death in 2020. In Congress, he remained a moral compass, urging young people to challenge injustice and defend democracy.

This Black History Month, Lewis’s legacy feels especially urgent. He believed democracy required participation, courage, and sacrifice. He understood that progress was not inevitable — it had to be demanded.

“Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble,” he often said.

In a time when voting rights, civil discourse, and civic engagement remain under strain, Lewis’s life reminds us that “good trouble” is not disorder — it is democracy in action.