859
It was difficult as an eight year old to understand the fuzzy black-and-white images filling our television screen in March 1965. One thing even I knew then was the attacks by Alabama state troopers on peaceful marchers – many from Atlanta – were perverse.
Fifty years later, revisiting the photo of John Lewis and others being beaten, I recall the utter powerlessness I felt then about my native South and nation.
Now I take solace in what would then have only seemed to be an absurd miracle: John overcoming not only a fractured skull, but serving as Atlanta’s congressman for now nearly 28 years.