Run: Book One

In New York City, Lewis leads a group into the South African consulate to protest its government’s brutal system of racial apartheid, another signal of his connecting the struggle for civil rights in the US with events abroad. After being arrested, he is bailed out by singer Harry Belafonte and actor Sidney Poitier, and while “[he] didn’t know it at the time, but that would end up being [his] last arrest of the movement” (80).

He returns to Alabama and campaigns for the Democratic primary challenger against the wife of radical segregationist George Wallace, the former governor who could not run himself due to term limits. Lewis also campaigns for local candidates, some of them segregationists but moderate compared to their opponents. In Lowndes County, the LCFO, now known as the “Black Panther Party” after its mascot, hands out comics to explain voting rights to local citizens. Come primary day, Black voters arrive in massive numbers, even in rural counties, and although Mrs. Wallace still wins, “some folks felt the large turnout was a turning point” (84).

For Stokely Carmichael, this is evidence that political power, not nonviolence, is the real key to civil rights, and as Lewis prepares to attend the 1966 SNCC conference, he learns that Carmichael is challenging him for the chairmanship.