The Battle for Our Memory Is the Battle for Our Country

ON JUNE 7, 2020, REPRESENTATIVE JOHN LEWIS MADE HIS last public appearance at the Black Lives Matter mural, painted on the road adjacent to the White House.

- - BY KIMBERLÉ W. CRENSHAW

He was so moved by the mural that he wanted to see it in person. Lewis noted, “The people in D.C. and around the world are sending a powerful message that we will get there.” The installation was commissioned by Mayor Muriel Bowser, who, at the time, recognized that “there are people who are craving to be heard and to be seen and to have their humanity recognized. We had the opportunity to send that message loud and clear on a very important street in our city.”

From the vantage point of the summer of nationwide protests following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Lewis’ appearance on Black Lives Matter Plaza felt like a coda to the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, a symbolic christening of the nation’s renewed journey to a more equitable future. His words recalled the prophecy of his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, who in his own last public appearance foretold a racially just future in his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech—one that he might not see, but one that just as surely would arrive.