David Moats, an author and journalist who lives in Salisbury, is a regular columnist for VTDigger. He is editorial page editor emeritus of the Rutland Herald, where he won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials on Vermont’s civil union law.
It was a sunny day in Southern California, and I was a freshman in college when an icon of the civil rights movement came by. He wasn’t an icon yet. That’s because the civil rights movement was not yet viewed as a world-historic achievement. In 1965 many Americans saw it as a source of trouble, and its leaders as troublemakers.
Hosea Williams was there recruiting young people to join the Freedom Riders in the South. One can only surmise what he thought of the country-club surroundings where he found himself at the University of California Santa Barbara. The terra cotta-colored, Spanish-style buildings, the verdant lawns, the gleaming Pacific just beyond the cliff — all this was a world away from the scrappy little southern towns where he had been working to secure the civil rights of African Americans. Earlier that year, he had been among the leaders of the march in Selma, Alabama, where police clubbed marchers to the pavement on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
My memory of Williams resurfaced recently because of the appearance on Oct. 7 of Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., at the Flynn Center in Burlington. Hosea Williams was next to Lewis at the head of the march in Selma. As Lewis recounted in Burlington, Williams had a semi-serious question for Lewis as they approached the phalanx of well-armed police officers on the bridge over the Alabama River: “Do you know how to swim?” Lewis responded: “No.” They wouldn’t have to swim, but it would take time for them to recover from the injuries suffered at the hands of the police in Alabama.
At UCSB on that sunny day, we were a couple dozen white kids spread out on a sloping lawn, and Williams was there to talk about the struggle. The march in Selma had already taken place, as had the Birmingham church bombing and the murders of Viola Liuzzo, of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, and of countless others killed by Klan members or other outlaws.
Hosea Williams had no illusions about racism and the South. After World War II, when he served under Gen. George Patton, he was beaten nearly to death, even while still in uniform, by white thugs. He had gone on to earn a master’s degree in chemistry, but when the civil rights movement beckoned, he became one of the closest associates of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the ongoing struggle. Now he was beckoning us to join that struggle in the South.
I didn’t go. The ostensible reason was that if I quit school I would be subject to the draft, and I thought the Vietnam War was as reprehensible as the oppression of black Americans. Also, I was afraid. I had never been to the South. I had led a sheltered life in a mostly white suburb of San Francisco. I was trying to expose myself to the realities of the world, but my innocence and naivete outmatched my ardor for justice. I was only 18 years old. Hosea Williams’ appearance at Santa Barbara was no doubt part of a broader effort to spread the word about nonviolent resistance, and I heard that message. Much time has passed since then. Williams died in 2000. But racism is on the rise, and John Lewis is still spreading the word.
And that’s why his appearance in Burlington was so inspiring. There are certain individuals whose very selves convey a force of conviction giving their words surpassing moral authority. They may give voice to uncomplicated ideas, but their history and their belief lend their ideas heightened power. Another person who has that power is the Dalai Lama.
When I have witnessed the Dalai Lama’s past appearances in Middlebury, I saw that the minute he entered a room, everyone there was galvanized by a heightened moral awareness. He had not spoken a word. He walked down the aisle, smiling, waving. The large crowd had brought with them a spiritual longing and awareness of a higher good, and the Dalai Lama allowed them to feel it, and to project those feelings onto him. It was a symbiotic exercise in hope. In the same way, Lewis’s presence on the stage at the Flynn brought the crowd alive, even before he had spoken a word. During his presentation, he often had simple, unexceptionable things to say. “Never give up.” “Don’t give in to hate.” Anybody could say these things, but when John Lewis said them, it meant something more.
Thus, it became important to me to speak to him. After his talk he sat at a table for more than an hour and a half with his co-author Andrew Aydin autographing copies of their books. I was near the end of the line, and as I approached him, I wanted to tell him of my encounter 54 years before with Hosea Williams.
“I wanted to tell you that Hosea Williams came to my college in California back in 1965 or ’66, and he gave an inspiring talk to a small group of us that left a lasting impression. I know he was your friend and colleague, and I just wanted to tell you that.”
Lewis brightened up. “Oh, yes, Hosea was always so full of energy.” He loved to sing and joke, Lewis said.
We exchanged a few more words, and Lewis extended his hand and looked me in the eye. “Thank you, brother,” he said.
When the Dalai Lama was walking down the aisle under a tent at a small gathering in 1989, he put his hand on the head of my 9-year-old son, who was standing by the aisle. It was a kind of blessing that has always remained with me, even if my son barely remembers it.
For John Lewis to say “thank you, brother” was a blessing similar in simplicity and power.
