Oral history interview with John Lewis, November 20, 1973

As the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, future Georgia congressional representative John Lewis was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement. Lewis begins the story of his involvement in the civil rights movement in 1957, when he left his family of tenant farmers in rural Pike County, Alabama, to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. While a seminary student in Nashville, Lewis began to participate in workshops on nonviolence and became an active and leading participant in the sit-in movement of 1960 in Nashville. For Lewis, the sit-in movement was substantial both for changing his personal views on the civil rights movement and for its ability to generate solidarity within the movement. Shortly after his introduction to civil rights activism, Lewis graduated and was ordained. Seeing the civil rights movement as "an extension of the Church, " Lewis devoted his energy to the movement full-time thereafter. In 1961, Lewis participated in the Freedom Rides through Mississippi and Alabama, and he offers an extensive overview of their purpose, the violent opposition the Riders faced, and the supp