TBA Law Blog

TBA Law Blog

Civil Rights Icons John Lewis, C.T. Vivian Had Strong Tennessee Ties

Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Jul 20, 2020
News Type: Passages

Civil rights leaders U.S. Rep. John Lewis and Rev. Cordy Tindell "C.T." Vivian both died Friday in Atlanta. Lewis, 80, lost a six-month fight with cancer. The son of sharecroppers, he survived a brutal beating by police during a landmark 1965 march in Selma, Alabama, to become a towering figure of the civil rights movement and a longtime U.S. congressman. Vivian, 95, also was a major force in the movement, working alongside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Lewis and Vivian had strong ties to Nashville, the Tennessean reports. As students at American Baptist College, they embraced nonviolent civil disobedience, leading them to organize sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and participate in “Freedom Rides” to protest Southern states’ refusal to desegregate public buses. Vivian also spearheaded creation of the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference. Some observers say the men refined their protest approach in Nashville before taking it to the south and beyond. Lewis continued his studies at Fisk University, was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington and served for three decades as representative for Georgia’s 5th Congressional District. His work also inspired civil rights leaders in Memphis, including the Rev. James Netters, who led protests in Memphis after attending and seeing Lewis at the March on Washington, the Commercial Appeal reports. In the late 1970s, Vivian founded an anti-racism organization that focused on monitoring the Ku Klux Klan and in 2008, created the C.T. Vivian Leadership Institute to encourage emerging grass-roots leaders, the Memphis Business Journal reports. CNN has more on both men.

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