>> this week on q&a, democratic congressman john lewis of georgia, author of "across that bridge: life lessons and a vision for change." >> congressman john lewis, why did you name your book "across that bridge"? >> well, during the past few years, i've been crossing bridges, rivers. many bridges. bridges of understanding, building bridges. trying to bring people together

to create what i like to call the beloved community. >> where's that edmond pettus bridge come into that picture? >> well, the edmond pettus bridge is symbolic of so many bridges, but in 1965 when i was much younger and had a little organization called the student non-violent coordinating committee where a group of young people, students and others, attempted to cross the edmond pettus bridge in selma, alabama to march from selma to montgomery, to dramatize to the nation and to the world that people wanted simply to register to vote. we were walking in twos and when we arrived at the apex of the bridge, down below we saw a

sea of blue. alabama state troopers. and we continued to walk. we came within hearing distance of the state troopers and a man identified himself and said i'm major john clow of the alabama state troopers. this is an unlawful march and it will not be allowed to continue. and one of the young people walking beside me said major, give us a moment to neil and pray. and the major said "troopers advance." they came toward us, beating us with nightsticks and bullwhips. tramping us with horses. at the foot of that bridge i was beaten. i thought i was going to die.

i thought i saw death. so at the foot of that bridge i gave a little blood to make it possible for all people to participate in the democratic process. so the book is just a symbolic bridge of many bridges that that we still must cross, rivers that we still must cross before we build a beloved community. a truly democratic society in america. >> did you ever look up who edmond pettus was? >> i did look up and discover this man, edmond pettus. a general in alabama. this particular bridge was dedicated the same year that i was born, in 1940. so i have a kinship to this bridge, and every year, sometimes more than once a year, but every year i make it a point to go back to that bridge and cross that bridge, and for the past 47 years, i've gone

back the first weekend in march since 1965. >> how did it fit in with everything that was going on back in the 1960's? >> in order to travel from montgomery to selma, you had to cross that bridge. you had to cross the alabama river. selma was in the heart of the blight belt of alabama. where hundreds and thousands of poor black people lived. they had been sharecroppers. farmers. but this little town selma was a place of commerce and people would come there on friday and saturday to shop. but in selma, people could not

register to vote because of the color of their skin. only 2.1% of blacks were registered to vote. you had to pass a so-called literacy test. on one occasion a man was asked to count the number of bars of soap. another occasion a man was asked to count the number of jelly beans in a jar. the only time you could even attempt to go into the county courthouse and go up a set of steps through the double doors to get a copy of the so-called literacy test and the application was on the first and third mondays of each month. and on occasion, the registrar would put up a sign saying office of the registrar is closed and people went there day in and day out standing in

line. people beaten. some arrested and jailed while they stood there. >> today the mayor of selma is the second african-american to have that job? >> the mayor of selma is the second african-american mayor in that city. the city council is a biracial city council. the police chief is an african- american. selma is a different place today. it is a better place today. >> what happened to you after you were beat season where'd you go? >> on that sunday afternoon i was beaten and 47 years later i don't recall how i made it back to the little church that we had left from, but apparently

someone literally carried me back to the church. i felt like i was going die. i do recall, i thought i saw death. i really thought i was going to die. but i do remember being back in that church. the little brown chapel a.m.e. church in downtown sell match. the church was fill told capacity. more than 2,000 people trying to get in to talk about what happened on the bridge. they said i don't understand it, how president johnson can send troops to vietnam and cannot send troops to sell marks alabama to protect people whose only desire is to register to vote. before i knew it, people had been transferred to the local hospital in selma, the good samaritan hospital, that was

omitted by a group of nuns and those wonderful sisters, they took care of us. and today many of those nuns are retired living in rochester, new york and i plan to go visit them within the next few days. >> was anybody severely wounded that they didn't get out of the hospital for a long time? >> there were people who stayed for a few days, a few weeks. i got out within two days. >> any of the names around you, would they be familiar to us in -- the people you marched with. >> i marched with -- later, not only -- on that day but later during the week and the following week with martin luther king jr. dr. king came to the hospital to visit us. the next day he came to visit us and he said to me, john, don't worry, we'll make it from selma to montgomery. he said he had made an appeal for religious leaders to come to selma and two days later more than a thousand priests, rabbis, nuns and ministers came. they marched to the same point where we had been beaten two days earlier and one young

minister went out with a group to try to get something to eat at a local restaurant. they were attacked by members of the clan. he was so severely beaten, the next day he died at a local hospital in birmingham. he was from boston, reverend james reed. >> when was it that people could walk across the bridge into montgomery and not get hassled? >> we went into federal court and got an order against jim clark, the sheriff of selma and ellis county and against governor george wallace and a federal judge issued a statement that we had a right to march. president johnson condemned the violence in selma, introduced the violent right act and before he concluded that speech he said "and we shall overcome"" we call it the "we shall overcome" speech. it was one of the most

meaningful speeches an american president had delivered in modern times on civil rights. >> you mention in your book about rosa parks and you go back to her training. you say that when she sat on that bus and wouldn't get up that she had earlier training for that in tennessee. can you tell us about that place? >> there is a little school -- at that particular time a little school did exist in tennessee in a little place called mount eagle, tennessee.

it is between nashville and chattanooga, tennessee and was called highlanders folk school. it was started by a brave, a brave and courageous white gentleman, miles thornton. it was a wonderful place and he was a wonderful, wonderful man. it was to train and organize union people. many white workers, and then he started working in the area of race relations. bringing black people and white people together. it was one of the few meeting places in the heart of the deep south where blacks and whites could meet, and he started training people there how to organize, how to become community organizers, how to

protest and that's when we started singing "we shall overcome." that's where rosa parks heard it. she had her first meal with someone of a different race. it was also for me, the first place that i had a meal with someone white. but we worked together. we studied together and we studied the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence. we studied for what gandhi attempted to do in south africa, what he accomplished in india. we studied about marine luther king jr. and restudied the role of disobedience. by the time of selma we were more than prepared. >> so rosa park was in 1965, the bus incident. >> she took a seat on december 1, 1955 in downtown montgomery

and that led to the montgomery busboy colt of 1955 and 1956. >> you'd have been 15 then. >> i was 15 years old and i remember it like it was yesterday. i heard it on radio and read it about it in the number. my grandfather had one. we were too poor to get it. i would read his number and i followed drama of the montgomery busboy company because when i was growing up and visit the little town of troy, alabama or visit tuskegee or montgomery and see those signs that said white men, colored women. white waiting, colored waiting and ask my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great grand parents why, why? they said that's the way it is. don't get in the way, don't get in trouble. but it was the vision of rosa parks and other that inspired me to get into trouble. today i call it good trouble,

necessary trouble. >> you say in your book that 40 different times you were behind bars. can you tell us about some of those? >> >> the first time i got arrested was in nashville, tennessee. i was a student at fisk. i spent six years in nashville. nashville, tennessee was the first city that i lived in. i grew up in rural, rural alabama and going off to school there, i wanted to find a way to do something. when i heard dr. king speaking on our radio, i felt like he was speaking directly to me. john lewis, you can do something, you can make a contribution. so going to nashville and the highlander folk school prepared me to find a way and i got involved in the city.

>> how did you think about highlander folk school? >> attending meetings in nashville. attending school, church and people were saying you can go to nashville and from there you can go and visit hider folk school. they were training people, teaching people and when i got a chance to go with a group of schoolmates, classmates, i made a trip there and it was there they literally grew up. it taught me how to be prepared, to sit in. it taught me how to help organize. i literally grew up at the age of 18 and 19. >> was marion berry at fisk when you were there?

>> marion berry was a aggravated assault student at fisk university when i was in nashville. he attended some of the first nonviolent workshops and he later became the chairperson on the student nonviolent coordinating committee. but he participated in the first test event in nashville in the fall of 1959. students from fisk university, tennessee state university, vanderbilt university, peabody college and american baptist. and we had to test the facilities just to establish the fight that we would be served or denied service. it was an interracial group of college students. >> why did you major in philosophy and do you have a major philosophy?

>> i majored in philosophy. i was interested in becoming a minister. i studied philosophy and religion long before i went off to school. i had this desire, this burning desire -- some people call it a calling. it's your call to preach. you move out of spirit. but i felt i needed to be trained. when i was a little boy, i used to from time to time play church as a very, very young child. and it was my responsibility on the farm to care for the chickens, to raise the chickens, so we would get all of our chickens together in the chicken yard and my brothers and sisters and my cousins would help make up the audience.

make up the congregation. and i was preaching. and when i looked back, some of these chickens would shake their heads. they never quite said amen. but i'm convinced that some of those chickens that i preached to during the 1940's and 1950's tended to listen to me much better than some of my colleagues listen to me today. and some of those chickens were a little more productive. at least they produced eggs, but those chickens taught me patience and by i got to nashville and the school and the movement, i was prepared. i was ready to sit there and wait, and wait all day, until late evening to be served and we were denied service. and we were arrested. and we went to jail. the first time i got arrested was on february 27, 1960. and when i was arrested i felt

free. >> where did you go? >> i was taken -- placed in a wagon a police wagon, a van, taken to the city jail with 88 other students. youhat's the longest time ever spent in a prison? >> the longest time i ever spent in a prison was in mississippi. >> parchman? >> it was in parchman and no one in their right mind wanted to go there. >> tell us about parchman? >> people will write about parchman in novels, plays, poems. it was known as sort of no- man's land. people go there and some people didn't return. i remember so well, after staying many days in jail in jackson, mississippi, the city jail, the county jail, and then being taken down to parchman. >> were there others that we would know that were with you at the time? >> one of the young people that went to jail with me in parchman was bob fillmer, a

congressperson from california. he was only 19 years old. i was 21 at the time. but there were individuals like the reverend james lawson. became one of our wonderful teachers of the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. bernard lafier, james belfer, diane nash. these were all young people in the movement. there were men and women that got arrested and went to jail. williams coffin got arrested and went to jail. there were lawyers, ministers, rabbis, priests. people came in all over the country. they couldn't take people being arrested and taken to jail simply because they wanted to be served at a lunch counter or ride together on a bus. >> you didn't tell us who your favorite philosopher was. >> my favorite philosopher i would study was hugo. hugo talked in his thesis -- he talked about the struggle between good and evil. that in society, if you want to

bring about change there must be a struggle. and there must be a division between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. the forces of good and the forces of evil. and somehow out of that evil and good, something wholesome must emerge, and in the final analysis you have to move towards reconciliation. so in the book, in the last chapter, i talk about reconciliation. in may of 1961, on the freedom ride. my seat mate was a young white

gentleman. the two of us arrived at a little bus station in south carolina. we were beaten, left bloody, left in a pool of blood, and one of the young men that beat me on may, 1961, came to my office in west virginia, in february, 2010 -- >> edwin wilson? >> yes, edwin wilson, mr. wilson. came to my office with his son who had been encouraging his

father to seek out the people that he had abused and attacked during the 1960's. he came and said mr. lewis, i'm one of the people that attacked you, that beat you. i want to apologize. will you accept my apology? will you forgive me? he started crying. his son started crying. i started crying. he hugged me. i gave him a hug. he called me brother. i called him brother, and since then i've seen this gentleman four more times. that was moving to a reconciliation. and even today when i go back to places in alabama or other parts of the south, young people and people not so young, some older people, white people of the south come up and say mr. lewis, congressman lewis, i want to apologize to you on behalf of all of the white people of alabama and of south for what we did. >> mr. wilson and you were in confrontation physically where he assaulted you where? >> mr. wilson beat me, knocked me down, left me bloody at the greyhound bus station in rock hill, south carolina.

about 35 miles from charlotte, north carolina. >> what was the occasion? >> we were traveling through the south as part of the freedom riders. traveling on a greyhound bus and some on a trailway bus. back in 1961 after you left washington, d.c., black people and white people couldn't be seated together on a bus. couldn't use the same waiting room. couldn't be seated together at a lunch counter, in a restaurant. couldn't use the same restroom

facilities. we were testing a decision of the united states supreme court, trying to make it real. and people, not just in south carolina but in alabama -- people beat us at the greyhound bus station in montgomery. left us bloody. they tried to burn down a church with hundreds of people in it. that came to salute the freedom riders. and we rode on to mississippi and then in jackson we were arrested. hundreds of us. we filled the city jail, the county jail, and later we were

transported to the state penitentiary at parchman. >> how long were you there? >> for about 40 days >> what impact did it have on you? >> parchman gave me time to reflect. gave me time to contemplate. gave me the sense that i'm like a tree planted by the river waters and i shall not be removed. it gave me a greater sense of determination and sticktuitiveness that when i got out i was going to continue to do what i could to end racial in the south. >> how long were you in congress?

>> this year will be 26 years. >> how did your autobiography do? we were talking about that a number of years ago. still selling? >> my autobiography, memoir "walking with the wind" it is still selling. it is doing very, very well. as a matter of fact in many high schools and some colleges and universities around the country it's required reading. >> why did mr. wilson come back to reconcile with you? what triggered it? >> more than anything else, i believe the election of president barack obama moved

host:. but it's also the influence of his son. his son wanted his father to be on the right side and the father really wanted to be on the right side. this man is a wonderful, wonderful human being. he took a lot of heat for having the courage to do what he did because the local press back in rock hill, and then he was on national television, and so people saw it. he got telephone calls, but he's a brave and courageous man.

he said it was the right thing to do and he's very, very sincere and he made me feel freer and just meeting him, he was the very first person to come to me and apologize, really. >> i want to show you a different person in the movement. this goes back to 1966 and it's part of a speech that he gave and i want to ask you to contrast. let's watch this. >> if black people controlled ellis county, they have the tax collector and the guns, the

sheriff, they're going to raise the property tax. white people are either going to sell or pay the taxes and we can all go on welfare for a decent salary. \[applause] and if you had black people who are responsive to manhattan where they can control it since they're 60% they can then begin to change the economy of that country. and the pressure that black people will fight for will motivate and move the rest of this country. because this country moves precisely because of the civil rights movement. johnson must stop the civil rights movement because it is the biggest threat to his great society. >> a man that looked at life a little bit differently than you did. did you get along with him? >> i got along with stokley. he came south during the fall or late summer of 1961 during the freedom rides and later came back during the mississippi summer project in 1964. but i don't think stokley ever understood the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence.

he never made that commitment. he grew up in new york city. attended howard university. and i think those of us who grew up in the heart of the deep south, who came under the influence of martin luther king jr. and individuals like jim lawson, who had a sort of a baptism in the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence, we took the long, hard look. we believed that our struggle was not a struggle that lasts for a day or a few weeks or a few months or a semester. it was a struggle of a lifetime and i said then and i say it even today, you have to pace yourself the long, hard look, the long, hard struggle. you have to come to that point and accept nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living. our struggle was not a struggle between blacks and whites. not a struggle between people but a struggle between what is right and what is wrong. what is good and what is evil. between the forces of justice and the forces of injustice. in the movement, during the time when i was chair of the student nonviolent coordinating committee and in the movement knits general, we called ourselves a circle of trust. a band of brothers and sisters. when someone got arrested, went to jail, someone beaten with you, almost died with you, you forget about race and color. >> how did the student nonviolent coordinating committee start and who funded it in the early days and where did it start? >> the student nonviolent coordinating committee grew out of the city movement. there was a young woman by the name of ella baker. she was not that young at the time. now deceased. she was working for dr. martin

luther king jr. as his executive assistant in atlanta. and when the sit-in movement spread across the south like wildfire, dr. king requested of her to call these young people together from the different college campuses and have a conference and she made the decision to hold this conference easter weekend, april 1960 at shaw university in raleigh, north carolina and the reason she went to shaw, university, she knew the school because she was a graduate. she had worked for the naacp, the ywca. she was just one of these smart, gifted women that knew everybody and she pulled that conference off and not just black young people but many white young people. >> was she white or black? >> she was black but she had many, many allies in the white community. friends in civil and social and religious organizations and it was in that meeting that dr. king thought that the students would become the youth arm or the student arm of his

organization, but she insisted that we make up our own mind and create our own organization. so the organization was called a temporary student nonviolent coordinating committee and marion berry, who had been a aggravated assault student at fisk university in nashville became the temporary chair of the temporary student nonviolent coordinating committee, april of 1960 and later there was a fall meeting in atlanta or moore house college campus where the student nonviolent coordinating committee became a permanent organization as -- with marion berry as the chair of the organization. james clyburn who was named to congress, attended the meeting with us in atlanta in october 1960. >> and his daughter is now a member of the federal communications committee? >> his daughter is a member of the federal communication committee.

>> i want to show you some more video of stokley carmichael. years later -- i think i did the last interview with him and he dialed back in 1988, 1999. his name then was quame turi. i ask him about thinks career and all that. let's watch a little bit of what he had to say. tell us why he went one way and you went another. >> the difference here between king and i. we started to talk about it before. king took it as a principle. being an honest man, which he was, king had to use it at all times in the wrong conditions. you will see me in nonviolent acts. i've been beaten, sent to hospitals on nonviolent demonstrations and i've never broken nonviolent

demonstrations. only once. so i've kept it but if it's no longer working now, i'm not going, to like dr. king become hostage to a tactic as a principle. tactic of guns. >> i'm convinced that stokley never, never ever allowed himself to adhere to nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living. he saw it only as a tactic, as he said, only as a means to an end. but those of us who accepted the philosophy of nonviolence as a way of life and living, we were saying that the means and ends were inseparable.

that if you accept this idea that you're going to create the beloved community. if the beloved community is the end, is -- if that is the goal, the message, the means, must be one of love, one of peace. and if you accept this idea that in the bosom of every creature, every human being that is -- there is the spark of what i call the divine, you don't have a right to abuse it. you respect the dignity and the words of every person. as dr. king would say hate, bitterness, it's too heavy a burden to bear. >> back in those early 1960's, you talked a little bit about the freedom rides and about you being chairman of snick as the student nonviolent coordinating

committee for three years? >> yes, i served as three long years as chairman of the student nonviolent coordination. longer than any other person. >> how big was the organization? >> the organization has hundreds, hundreds of what we call members and at one time there were staffers. but people would pay pennies. they were not people with big salaries. most of the individuals got like maybe $10 a week and you got money for gasoline if you had a car and you had to drive some place, if you had to fly some place, but it was students from around the country and other organizations and individuals and groups that supported us. it was a very poor organization. >> during your time what was the biggest accomplishment you

had? during the time they served as chair it was during the march of washington. >> how much did you have to do? i know you were standing on the steps there and you were how would? >> i was 23 in 1963 when i became chairman of the student nonviolent coordinating committee. one of the first obligations i had was to attend a meeting along with dr. martin luther king and others, president kennedy. and it was during that meeting that we told president kennedy that we were going to march on washington. president kennedy didn't like the idea. he said if you bring all these

people to washington won't be violence and chaos and disorder? we'll never get a civil right bill through congress. and it was a civel rights icon who spoke up and said mr. president, this will be an orderly, peaceful, nonviolent protest and we went around the country organizing, mobilizing and we invited four major white religious and labor leaders to join us. so there were 0e of us. that spoke. and considered ourselves the leaders of the march. i spoke number six. dr. king spoke number 10. and out of the 10 people that spoke that day, i'm the only one still around. but i remember so well after the march was over, after dr. king had delivered that speech.

president kennedy invited us back down to the white house. he stood in the door of the oval office greeting each one of us. he was like a beaming, proud father. he was so glad that everything had gone so well and he said you did a good job. you did a good job. and when he got to dr. king he said ask you had a dream. that was my last time seeing dr. kennedy. >> this is not a positive but what's your reaction to over the years the king family charging money for ability for somebody to look at the "i have a dream" speech? >> i don't quite understand. i cannot make sense of that. the speech belongs to the ages. and i guess any of us could have -- could charge for someone reading or using a speech but i don't know anyone that's doing anything like that.

would we charge someone for the gettysburg address? for an inaugural address by presidents? a state of the union address? that speech longs to history. >> do you have any idea why? >> i -- i -- i have never been able to understand that. i really don't. i don't think dr. king would be very pleased to know that his heirs charged for using his likeness or using his speech for money and address. >> there's another person i believe was chairman of the student nonviolent coordination committee. h. rap brown. >> i never got really to know h. rap brown. he came long after i was no longer there. i made a decision when i was no

longer the chair of the student nonviolent coordinating committee to leave because they laid down their commitment to the philosophy and to the discipline of nonviolence and i didn't want to be associated with an organization or with a group that could not adhere and preach if philosophy. >> as you know, he's in prison for murder since 2000, but i want to show. his whole approach was even more agitating than stokley carmichael. >> lyndon johnson. he can always raise -- about law and order because he never talks about justice but black people fall for that same argument and they go around talking about law breakers.

we did not make the laws confined in this country. we are not legally or morally confined to easy to laws. those laws keep us down. you have to understand that. for 400 years they taught you white naturalism and you believed it. you taught your children black hens don't lay white eggs. nationalism. santa claus. a white honky who slides down a black chimney and comes out white! >> that last remark was interesting. white honky who slides down a black chimney comes out white. >> there's a lot of rhetoric. there's a lot of playing on words and very emotional. >> did it work? >> that was not part of the snick they knew. >> what happened?

>> something -- something went wrong. snick came to that point where, in my estimation, it was forced to die a natural death. we were conceived in this whole idea of the building of a truly interracial democracy. there were black students and white students working together, building together. suffering together. you cannot forget that in 1964, one year after i became chair, during the mississippi summer project that we recruited all these young people, blacks and whites, primarily students, but doctors and lawyers and priests and nuns came to work in mississippi during the voter registration drive. it had a black voter population of more than 436,000 but only about 16,000 were registered to vote.

these black people and people not so young came there to work in the freedom schools and three young men that i had knew, that i had met during the early part of the summer. annie goodman. nickey shirmer, white. james trainy, african-american, went out on a sunday night, june 21, 1964. they were detained by the sheriff, later taken to jail and that same evening they were taken from jail, beaten, shot, and killed. these three young men died there. their bodies were discovered six weeks later. and you cannot forget that. people suffered together, bled

together, died together and then how can a movement make that radical jump by 1960? people like stokley and rap came to that point when they were saying that all white people should leave and go work in a white community. our movement was an interracial movement. it was not to be a movement where we expelled people. it was all-inclusive. >> by the way, in all of this when did you meet your wife? i know you dedicated the book to her. >> i met my wife at the end of 1967. at a dinner party. and we started dating. >> where was the dinner party? >> the dinner party was in

atlanta at a friend of hers home and it was a discussion about the civil rights movement about dr. king and the movement and she defended. she was a strong defender of the movement and i guess that sort of warmed me toward her. and she was wearing a beautiful dress and it had the peace symbols and i think that sort of drew me toward her and i said to myself this young lady believed in peace and i don't think whether it was planned or whether it was a conspiracy on the part of the host of the party that she should defend the movement and that she would wear this dress with the peace symbols, but from that day on we hit it off very well. >> you were 27. were there people at the dinner party arguing against the movement? >> not necessarily arguing

against the movement but some people were questioning some of the tactics and techniques and where we were going. there were people but she was a strong defender. she grew up in los angeles. she had never lived in the south. she had attended ucla, u.s.c., and she spent two years in the peace corps. she studied to be a librarian and came south to work at atlanta university as a librarian. she had a tremendous amount of interest in the civil rights movement and -- >> do you have children? >> we have one son.

he's in atlanta. he's taken a great deal of interest in music and also in politics, but he doesn't want to run for any office. >> how much of atlanta do you represent? >> in the present district, i represent all of the city of atlanta, the entire city. where most of the colleges like georgia tech, georgia state university, moore house, spellma. brown, clark, atlanta university but i also represent emery, c.d.c. major corporations are all in the district. it's a wonderful district, wonderful people. >> let me reeled from your book in the introduction. remember how we thought the election of president obama meant we had finally created a post racial america, a place where the problems that have haunted us for so long were finally silenced? nobody says that anymore. we no longer dwell on that day dream. we were shake on the realism by the harshness of what we have witnessed in the last few years, the vilification of president obama, the

invisibility of the sick and poor murder at the holocaust museum and the shooting of representative gabriel giffords while she greeted constituents in a safeway parking lot. >> we're not there yet. we've made a lot of progress. his election, a major step down a very, very long road. but we have not yet created the beloved community. people ask me all the time whether the election of president barack obama is the fulfillment of dr. king's dream? i say no, it's just a down payment.

>> how painful is it for you to look back in your support of hillary clinton over barack obama? >> i don't feel any pain. i really don't feel any pain. >> what was the reason? >> i knew president clinton. i knew hillary. i've known them long before i ever met president barack obama. and they've been friends of mine. they've been supporters of mine. president clinton came to atlanta, celebrated my birthday. my 50th. and senator obama came for my 65th. when he was still in the senate. but he's a good friend of mine. i'm still a good friend of president clinton and secretary of state hillary clinton and president barack obama. we're like a family. and that's what the movement was all about. we're one family, we're one people, we're one house. we may have our differences but we work through them. >> another sentence -- the president of the united states

session of congress at a state of a union address. it was probably the lowest point of decorum i have witnessed in more than 20 years in the congress. >> it was unreal. it was unbelievable. when i heard a member of congress -- it's just -- you know, you have your differences and your feelings, but respect the office. of the president. if you cannot respect the man. >> let me show you some videotape i found in our archives. >> president clinton was impeached for lying about sexual involvement with an aide. evidence is coming to light that bush and his administration have lied to the world and to date little has been done about it. which is more wrong?

>> it is not in order to accuse the president of lying or stating intentional falsehoods, even if by innuendo. further, a member may not read into the record the remarks of others if they would be out of order as spoken by the member. thank you. >> but president bush's statements about children's health shouldn't be taken any more seriously about his lies about the war in iraq. the truth is that bush just likes to blow things up. >> members are reminded not to refer to the president in any personal way. >> both sides do i. >> it is my hope that we all can come together and be a little bit more civil. be a little more human. that's what i'm trying to say in this book.

can we just? going back to mr. wilson. do we have the courage, the power, the ability, the capacity sometime just to say i'm sorry? will you forgive me? can we get along? leaders must lead. people around the nation, they see us on c-span and leaders must be a headlight and not a taillight. >> in the chapter "peace" at the end. i want to read a paragraph that you wrote and ask you how effective you think it is to get people to read this. i asked you to reach down inside yourself and find the truth your life is compelling you to see. that is your road to true peace

and it is the beginning of the evolution of human kind. because every change in the world starts within. it begins with one individual who envisions his or her micro- universe the way it can be and settles for nothing less, and as one individual moves toward the light, that light ignites more individual flames and eventually the revolutionary inner work becomes an outer work that builds into a bonfire of light, the kind of light that can change the world. >> i believe that. i believe that one solitaire individual committed to the way of peace. the way of love, nonviolence, can change others. a community, the nation, the world.

we used to sing a little song during the movement "this little light of mine, let it shine." we have to let our little light shine. not just in our little room yes,. not just on capitol hill, yes, but in the larger world. ad that's what we must do as nation. somehow we have to humanize our politics. just be human. humanize our institution. it's hard, it's difficult for elected officials to say, you know, i love you. many of my colleagues in the congress -- i think people think it's strange sometime. i refer to them as brother. hi, my brother. how you doing, my brother? how you doing, sister?

we have to be examples to the larger nation, to the american community and to the world. >> you wrote about spencer baucus in here, republican from alabama. >> he's a wonderful human being. >> white. >> he's white, represents part of birmingham, alabama. i've heard him tell wonderful stories about growing up. the role that his father played. we traveled together. each year when it i would take black and white members, liberals and querltives back to alabama, he would always host us. we'd travel back to independence iowa to remember the 50th anniversary of dr. king's trip to india. and he's my brother.

he's my friend. he's more than a colleague. >> the name of the book -- "across that bridge: life lessons and a vision for change." our guest has been united states congressman john lewis. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. it's been an honor to be interviewed by you. thank you. \[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> for a d.v.d. copy of this program call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments, visit us at x-and-a.org. transcripts are also available at c span podcasts.

>> next sunday, august 12, look for our q&a interview with andrew nagorski. his new release is "hinderland" >> i had no idea of my predecessors. i had to spend a lot of time thinking about what would it have been like to have been a correspondent there in the 1920's and 19 thirds -- 1 30's. how would you have operated and noticed or not noticed, much less how would you have acted? >> next sunday on c-span's q&a. >> next sunday on c-span's q&a.