Walking with the Wind

John Lewis’s 1998 memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, written with Mike D’Orso, is an intimate firsthand account of the US Civil Rights Movement (CRM). Lewis, the child of sharecroppers, grew up in Pike County, Alabama, during the heyday of segregation in the American South. From a young age, Lewis questioned the injustices of segregation, yet never imagined that he would become one of the key leaders of the civil rights battles in the 1950s and 1960s.

Summary

Lewis organizes his memoir into seven chronological parts. He begins with a series of vignettes detailing his childhood: helping his aunt keep her house from blowing away in a severe storm (Prologue) and being responsible for the family chickens (Chapter 2). These early experiences instill in him qualities such as perseverance, patience, compassion, nonviolence, and a little bit of stubbornness, which shaped his character and paved the way for the role he would take within the CRM. In these opening chapters, Lewis also emphasizes the strength of those who came before him, including his mother (Chapter 1) and Dr. Martin Luther King (Chapter 3), which enabled the CRM’s accomplishments.

Inspired by Dr. King’s message of social justice and direct action, Lewis makes a seminal decision to leave Pike County in 1957 to attend the American Baptist Theological (ABT) Seminary in Nashville.