The City of West Hollywood has lowered flags to half-staff through the weekend to honor the life of John Lewis.
Lewis died yesterday at the age of 80. The 17-term Congressman from Georgia was a icon of the early civil rights movement. He also was an advocate for extending the anti-discrimination protections granted under the Civil Rights Act to cover discrimination faced by gay, lesbian and transgender people.
One of the things Lewis was best known for was his work at the age of 25 in planning Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 protest march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama. That peaceful march ended in a bloody battle with Alabama state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and inspired demonstrations across the county. Shortly thereafter Congress passed the Voting Rights Act to ensure Black citizens’ right to vote, which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
All flags I saw on Saturday in the Boys’ Town area were at half-staff. Why, however, were all the flags . . . national, state, and rainbow . . . that I saw walking to and fro between Larrabee and the Melrose Place Farmer’s Market Sunday morning back at full-staff?
INVICTUS William Ernest Henley, British Poet 1849-1903 Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeoning of chance My head is bloody but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid It matters not how straight the gate, Hw charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master… Read more »
Hopefully in times like this we can remember the heroes who got paved the way for the first African American President. It’s nice to remind ourselves what dignity and honor look like. RIP good man – very glad our city flag is at half mast
A Giant of a Man.
Interesting connections if one looks into his past coming from Troy, Alabama to Selma, home and playground of the virulent Jeff Sessions and Edmund Pettis and on to becoming a stalwart member of Congress.
Reading the biographies of these two individuals and one great man will reveal much in the trajectory of race relations, white supremacy and how it found fertile ground in the current White House.