Join host Hilary Claggett and fellow Columbia alumni for a discussion of John Lewis: Good Trouble. Dawn Porter’s 2020 CNN documentary is about the life and work of the late Congressman from Georgia, who served from 1987 until his passing at age 80 in July of this year. A civil rights leader since his teens, Lewis had been arrested 24 times for peaceful, nonviolent protests before he became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1963. At the March on Washington that year, he spoke just ahead of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; Lewis’s own planned speech was watered down by other march leaders from its original complaints about the Civil Rights Bill’s failure to protect Black Americans from policy brutality, among other things. He led the historic 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where marchers were met with extreme violence. Suffering a skull fracture at the hands of police, he was treated at a local church. Lewis fought tirelessly his entire life to expand voting rights, only to see those rights curtailed and obstructed during the last four years. Nonetheless, he remained optimistic, campaigning for Stacey Abrams in the Georgia gubernatorial race, which she lost by the narrowest margin in a Georgia governor’s race since 1966. In an essay he wrote for the New York Times that was published on the day of his funeral, he said he was inspired by those who were protesting the death of George Floyd at the hands of police: "You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society," Lewis wrote. "Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division."

Link to Watch the Film: https://www.johnlewisgoodtrouble.com/watch-at-home/

Date: Tuesday, November 17

Time: 6:30 P.M.

Cost: Free

Location: Zoon Video Conference