CANR
WORK TITLE: John Lewis
WORK NOTES:
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CITY: New York
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COUNTRY: United States
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LAST VOLUME: CA 393
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PERSONAL
Born 1968; married Suzanne Nossel; children: Leo, Liza.
EDUCATION:Yale University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1990; Columbia University, M.A., 1996, M.Phil., 1998, Ph.D., 2001.
ADDRESS
CAREER
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, MA, archival assistant, 1988, 1990; New Republic, New York, NY, reporter and researcher, 1990-91, managing editor, 1994-95, acting editor, 1996; Slate (online magazine), New York, NY, staff editor of culture section, 1996-98; Columbia University, New York, NY, lecturer in history, 2001-02; American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, MA, visiting scholar, 2002-03; Yale University, New Haven, CT, lecturer in history and political science, 2003-04; New York Times, New York, NY, staff editor of opinion page, “Week in Review,” 2003; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, assistant professor, 2004-08, associate professor of history and of journalism and media studies, 2008—, fellow of Livingston College, 2004—. Richard Nixon Presidential Library, oral historian, 2007; National Public Radio, advisor to Audio History Project, 2008. Jewish Book Council, judge for Jewish History Book Awards, 2003, 2006; American Historical Association, judge for Albert J. Beveridge Book Prize, 2009-12, chair, 2011-12; American Society of Magazine Editors, judge of National Magazine Awards, 2010. Columbia University, visiting associate professor, 2014; New York Public Library, Cullman Center fellow, 2021-22; speaker at hundreds of other institutions, conferences, and media presentations; consultant on history and media studies.
MEMBER:American Historical Association (life member), American Journalism History Association, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, National Communications Association, American Studies Association, American Political Science Association, National Book Critics Circle, Phi Beta Kappa.
AWARDS:Annual Political Book Award, Washington Monthly, 2003, and Book of the Year Award, American Journalism Historians Association, 2004, both for Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image; White House Historical Association Award, 2003, for Nixon’s Shadow, and 2006, for Calvin Coolidge; named top young historian, History News Network, 2006; Fulbright senior specialist, 2007-12; Hiett Prize, Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 2008; fellowship for Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2010-11; named Guggenheim fellow, 2023.
WRITINGS
Columnist for Politico; contributing editor of the column “History Lesson,” Slate, 1998—. Contributor to books, including Next: Young American Writers on the New Generation, edited by Eric Liu, W.W. Norton, 1994; Watergate and the Resignation of Richard Nixon, edited by Harry P. Jeffrey and Thomas Maxwell-Long, CQ Press, 2004; The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment, edited by Julian Zelizer, Princeton University Press, 2010; From Votes to Victory: Winning and Governing the White House in the 21st Century, edited by Meena Bose, Texas A&M University Press, 2011; Liberty and Justice for All: Rethinking Politics in Cold War America, 1945-1965, edited by Kathleen Donohue, University of Massachusetts Press, 2012; and The Civil Liberties Legacy of Harry S. Truman, edited by Richard Kirkendall, Truman State University Press, 2013. Contributor of hundreds of articles and reviews to periodicals and online publications, including Atlantic, Clio’s Psyche, Daedalus, Dissent, Journal of American History, New Yorker, New York Times, Raritan, Sixties: Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, and Washington Post.
SIDELIGHTS
David Greenberg is an historian, journalist, and media expert. He became a reporter for the New Republic in 1990 and spent the next ten years as a magazine writer and editor. In 2001 Greenberg received a Ph.D. from Columbia University and began a career in academia. He joined the faculty of Rutgers University in 2004 and became a professor of United States history. Greenberg’s research and writing reflect an ongoing interest in the American presidency. His studies differ somewhat from typical biographies in their perspective, however. Greenberg’s academic research focus is the history of images: images nurtured and molded by the presidents themselves.
Presidential Doodles
The most entertaining study may be Presidential Doodles: Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles & Scrawls from the Oval Office. The volume contains impromptu drawings by twenty-five presidents going back as far as George Washington. The collection of about fifty sketches was curated by representatives of Cabinet magazine; the commentary is Greenberg’s. In his opinion, the sketches range from funny (Theodore Roosevelt), to strange (Herbert Hoover), vulgar (Ronald Reagan), and sad (Kennedy). On a more serious note, Greenberg explores what these informal visual images reveal about the men who made them.
Neil Genzlinger observed in the New York Times that “a doodle is the ultimate private act.” In fact, as Richard Saturday pointed out at Ralph: Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy, and the Humanities, some presidents went so far as to classify their idle drawings under the umbrella of executive privilege; some were composed during momentous Cabinet meetings, while others implied private opinions that a president would never dare speak aloud. According to Genzlinger, “In this age of stage-managed presidencies, the doodle may be more consequential than ever.”
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge is not well remembered today, nor is he greatly admired, but he was a popular leader in his day. Calvin Coolidge is Greenberg’s biography of a man who emerged during the economic boom that followed World War I and faded from sight before the stock market crash of 1929. The Republican conservative promoted big business and small government. He opposed high taxes and labor unions. Dubbed “Silent Cal,” he was a man of few words, but his actions resonated among middle-class Americans. He lowered federal income taxes from a wartime seventy-percent high to twenty percent or less, eliminated wartime restrictions on consumption, lowered the national debt, and capped federal spending. Coolidge was widely credited for the economic prosperity of the Roaring Twenties, but Greenberg argues that, while his policies represented one facet of economic growth, some of them actually contributed to the Great Depression to come.
In the Washington Times, Jeremy Lott summarized Greenberg’s position by suggesting that the “policies were ill-considered but well sold.” Erica Grieder observed in the New York Sun: “Coolidge’s public presence was a model of sobriety, piety, and discipline.” John Derbyshire noted at his home page that Coolidge had “mastered the new politics of public opinion.” Despite his personal distaste for public appearances, he held press conferences, delivered radio addresses, and performed humble farmyard chores for the newsreel cameras. Derbyshire summarized: “Greenberg has done an admirable job. He captures the character and achievements of this odd president, who seems at first sight to have been so out of tune with his times … but who was in fact just what the country needed.” Greenberg believes that Coolidge’s “management of his image was ahead of his time,” according to Ray Olson’s review in Booklist, but “his conception of presidential power … was utterly of it.”
Nixon's Shadow
Thirty years later, another president would take image management to new heights. In Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image, Greenberg reveals “a protean politician who wore many masks,” reported Jay Parini in the Guardian Online, a man who “manipulated the media with a deliberateness that remains breathtaking.” “He constantly shifted political stances and alliances to keep what he imagined to be the most voter-friendly image before the public view,” explained a contributor to Kirkus Reviews. In the 1940s he was a typical family man seeking the postwar American dream; during the McCarthy Era he campaigned as a ferocious Communist-hunter. That role failed him in the 1960 campaign against Kennedy; by 1968 he had remodeled himself as an opponent of involvement in Vietnam who could heal America’s wounds. Greenberg describes Nixon as a political shape-shifter, an anti-Communist who could still make peace with China, a conservative who could still support government assistance to families in need. The seventies revealed him as the villainous mastermind of Watergate, while the eighties and nineties recalled an elder statesman and visionary.
Ultimately, observed Raj Jethwa at H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, Greenberg claims that “that there is no universally acknowledged view of Nixon.” Critics questioned some of Greenberg’s arguments, but they commended his unbiased presentation. He makes no effort to find the man behind the shadows; his concern is—like Nixon’s own—how the man was perceived. He enraged liberals and inspired the allegiance of the middle class, Ted Widmer observed in the New York Times. Widmer also pointed out that “the unhealthy impulse to divide Americans along cultural lines … gives this book a modern relevance.” Jethwa commented: “The strength of Nixon’s Shadow … is that we see exactly why Nixon continues to arouse such a variety of emotions in people.” A Publishers Weekly contributor reported that the volume, despite some flaws, “brightly illuminates the passionate public responses that swirled around one of the most controversial politicians of our times.”
Republic of Spin
Richard Nixon may have elevated presidential spin to new heights, but in Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency, Greenberg reminds readers that political image management is nothing new. George Washington was not above using Alexander Hamilton to polish his farewell speech. Supporters of Abraham Lincoln shamelessly promoted the successful lawyer as a backwoods phenomenon. Theodore Roosevelt cultivated his press corps and devised tactical strategies for timing the release of bad (or good) news.
In other words, every president has attempted to influence public opinion with the tools available to him. Greenberg credits Calvin Coolidge for mastering public opinion in the 1920s with the aid of technological innovations that carried his message to the masses. Presidential public relations would never be the same. The twentieth century offered radio, film, television, and social media. Press aides gave way to bona fide government “information” offices. The private sector offered the expertise of advertising agencies, opinion pollsters, media consultants, voice coaches, and makeover artists. The manipulation has become so ubiquitous, Greenberg claims, that it can actually inspire more skepticism than approval, and to him that is not necessarily a bad thing. Julia M. Klein observed in the Columbia Journalism Review that “Greenberg wants to reclaim spin … as a valid instrument of democratic discourse, … if employed for worthy ends.”
Some critics found Republic of Spin too academic or long for a casual audience, but many recommended it as well. “It is a textbook study,” observed Christopher Buckley in the National Interest, “but lively as can be.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor found it to be “at once scholarly, imaginative, and great fun.” In his Booklist review, Gilbert Taylor recommended the study as “balanced, interesting, and timely for the 2016 campaign.”
Alan Brinkley and John Lewis
(open new)Alan Brinkley: A Life in History offers a biography of the American political historian, Alan Brinkley. Edited by Greenberg, Moshik Temkin, and Mason Williams, the account combines a range of articles on Brinkley’s life as an historian from historians, his former students, and university colleagues. Snippets from interviews are also included where Brinkley discusses his own publications. In a review in Choice, A.M. Mayer suggested that “this celebration of Brinkley allows the layman to appreciate the man and the academic.”
Greenberg’s John Lewis: A Life presents a comprehensive biography of the congressman and late civil rights leader John Lewis. The account starts with Lewis’s early interests in books and his educational background in theology. As a student he was active at organizing students and pushing voter turnout. He practiced nonviolence as a core foundation of his activism despite being beaten numerous times by White supremacists and police officers throughout his life. The book then illustrates Lewis’s career as he pivoted into national politics and the legacy he left behind.
A Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked that it is “an exemplary life, and an exemplary biography that will rekindle readers’ commitment to racial justice.” Writing in New York Times Book Review, Brent Staples commented that the author “makes us privy to the alchemy that transformed a shy Alabama farm boy into a central voice of the movement that drove a dagger into the heart of Jim Crow. This biography sets a new standard by giving Lewis’s post-civil-rights story the depth of attention it deserves—and showing how our mild-mannered seminarian submerged his pacifist tendencies enough to succeed in the bare-knuckled world of electoral politics.”(close new)
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Prospect, October 1, 2003, Drake Bennett, review of Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image, p. 36.
Booklist, August 1, 2003, Gilbert Taylor, review of Nixon’s Shadow, p. 1947; December 15, 2006, Ray Olson, review of Calvin Coolidge, p. 14; December 15, 2015, Gilbert Taylor, review of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency, p. 17.
California Bookwatch, April 1, 2016, review of Republic of Spin.
Choice, June 1, 2019, A.M. Mayer, review of Alan Brinkley: A Life, p. 1285.
Columbia Journalism Review, January 11, 2016, Julia M. Klein, review of Republic of Spin.
Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2003, review of Nixon’s Shadow, p. 893; October 15, 2015, review of Republic of Spin; September 1, 2024, review of John Lewis: A Life.
Library Journal, August 1, 2003, Karl Helicher, review of Nixon’s Shadow, p. 100; January 1, 2007, Thomas J. Baldino, review of Calvin Coolidge, p. 123; November 15, 2015, Stephen Kent Shaw, review of Republic of Spin, p. 94.
National Interest, March 1, 2016, Christopher Buckley, review of Republic of Spin, p. 67.
New Yorker, March 21, 2016, Sameen Gauhar, review of Republic of Spin, p. 95.
New York Sun, December 20, 2006, Erica Grieder, review of Calvin Coolidge.
New York Times, November 16, 2003, Ted Widmer, review of Nixon’s Shadow; December 3, 2006, Neil Genzlinger, review of Presidential Doodles: Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles & Scrawls from the Oval Office; January 24, 2016, Michael Beschloss, review of Republic of Spin, p. BR13.
New York Times Book Review, October 20, 2024, Brent Staples, review of John Lewis, p. 11.
Publishers Weekly, July 7, 2003, review of Nixon’s Shadow, p. 62; January 1, 2007, review of Calvin Coolidge; November 23, 2015, review of Republic of Spin, p. 60.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 9, 2016, Harry Levins, review of Republic of Spin.
USA Today, October 19, 2006, Bob Minzesheimer, review of Doodles, p. 5D.
Washington Monthly, January 1, 2016, Joshua Green, review of Republic of Spin, p. 43.
Washington Times, February 19, 2007, Jeremy Lott, review of Calvin Coolidge.
ONLINE
Brothers Judd, http://brothersjudd.com/ (April 28, 2007), review of Calvin Coolidge.
Guardian Online, http: //www.theguardian.com/ (October 4, 2003), Jay Parini, review of Nixon’s Shadow.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, http://www.h-net.org/ (June 27, 2016), review of Nixon’s Shadow.
John Derbyshire website, http://www.johnderbyshire.com/ (June 27, 2016), review of Calvin Coolidge.
Organization of American Historians website, https://www.oah.org/ (December 29, 2024), author profile.
Ralph: Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy, and the Humanities, http://www.ralphmag.org/ (June 27, 2016), Richard Saturday, review of Doodles.
School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University website, https://comminfo.rutgers.edu/ (December 29, 2024), faculty profile.
David Greenberg (historian)
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Greenberg
Spouse Suzanne Nossel
Academic background
Education Yale University (BA)
Columbia University (MA, MPhil, PhD)
Thesis Nixon's Shadow: Democracy and Authenticity in Postwar American Political Culture (2001)
Academic work
School or tradition American political and cultural history
Institutions Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Website Official website
David Greenberg is a historian and professor of US history as well as of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University,[1] New Jersey, United States.
US history books
Greenberg’s Ph.D. thesis won Columbia University’s 2001 Bancroft Dissertation Award[2] and became his first book, Nixon’s Shadow (2003), which won the Washington Monthly Annual Political Book Award and the American Journalism Historians Association's Book Award. Calvin Coolidge (2006), a biography in Henry Holt's American Presidents Series, appeared on the Washington Post’s list of best books of 2007. Presidential Doodles (2006) was widely reviewed and featured on CNN, NPR's All Things Considered, and CBS’s Sunday Morning. Republic of Spin (2016) examines the rise of the White House spin machine, from the Progressive Era to the present day, and the debates that Americans have waged over its implications for democracy. His most recent book, Alan Brinkley (2019), is about the political historian.
As of September 2022, he is writing a biography of Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights leader.[3]
Journalism
Formerly a full-time journalist, Greenberg is now a contributing editor to Politico Magazine, where he writes a regular column. He previously served as managing editor and acting editor of The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor until 2014. Early in his career, he was the assistant to author Bob Woodward on The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House (Simon & Schuster, 1994). He has also been a regular contributor to Slate since its founding and has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Daedalus, Dissent, Raritan, and many other scholarly and popular publications.
Awards
His awards and honors include the Hiett Prize in 2008, given each year to a single junior scholar in the humanities whose work has had a public influence; a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and the Rutgers University Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence. In 2021-22 he was a fellow at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library. He graduated from Yale University, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and earned his PhD from Columbia University.[4]
Bibliography
Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image (W.W. Norton, 2003) ISBN 9780393048964, 9780393326161, 9780393285277
Calvin Coolidge (Henry Holt / Times Books, 2006) ISBN 9780805069570
Presidential Doodles: Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles, and Scrawls from the Oval Office squiggles & scrawls from the Oval Office (Basic Books, 2006) ISBN 9780465032662, 9780465032679, 9780465003624
Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency (W.W. Norton, 2016) ISBN 9780393067064, 9780393353648, 9780393285505, 9781531874315
Alan Brinkley: A Life in History (Columbia University Press, 2019) ISBN 9780231187244, 9780231547161
John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster, 2024) ISBN 978-1982142995, 978-1982143015
David Greenberg is an associate professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. A frequent commentator in the national news media on contemporary politics and public affairs, he is the author most recently of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency (2016). His first book, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (2003), won the Washington Monthly's Annual Political Book Award, the American Journalism Historians Association's Book of the Year Award, and Columbia University’s Bancroft Dissertation Award. His biography Calvin Coolidge (2006) was included in the Washington Post’s list of best books of the year. His Presidential Doodles (2006) was widely reviewed and featured on CNN, NPR's All Things Considered, and CBS Sunday Morning. Formerly a full-time journalist, Greenberg served as managing editor and acting editor of the New Republic, where he was a contributing editor until 2014. He has also been a regular contributor to Slate since its founding and has written for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Daedalus, Dissent, Raritan, and many other popular and scholarly publications.
David
Greenberg
Professor of Journalism and Media Studies and of History
Faculty
Office:
DeWitt 106
PHONE:
646-504-5071
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732-932-6916
EMAIL:
davidgr@rutgers.edu
OFFICE HOURS:
Available by appointment
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Download CV
David Greenberg writes about history, politics, and media for a variety of scholarly and popular publications. He is the author of "Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency" (2016); "Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image" (2003); and "Calvin Coolidge" (2006). He is a frequent commentator in the national news media on contemporary politics and public affairs.
He is currently writing a biography of Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights leader.
Education
Columbia University
Ph.D., American History
Columbia University
M.Phil., American History
Columbia University
M.A., American History
Yale University
B.A., History
Research
David Greenberg is a historian of American political and cultural history. His books have examines subjects such as the history of presidential “spin” and the history of Richard Nixon as a symbol in American culture. His articles have dealt with many other aspects of American history, politics, journalism, and media.
Research Groups
Selected Publications
Greenberg, David. Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
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Greenberg, David. "Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image." W.W. Norton, 2003.
View
Greenberg, David. "Calvin Coolidge." Henry Holt/Times Books, 2006.
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Awards & Recognitions
Hiett Prize, given each year to a single junior scholar in the humanities whose work has had a public influence, 2008
Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2010-11
Rutgers University Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence
"Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image" (W.W. Norton, 2003) won the Washington Monthly Annual Political Book Award, the American Journalism History Award, and Columbia University’s Bancroft Dissertation Award
"Calvin Coolidge" (Henry Holt, 2006), a biography for the American Presidents Series, appeared on the Washington Post’s list of best books of 2007
CV:chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://comminfo.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/2021-01/Greenberg%20long%20CV%202021-01.pdf
Alan Brinkley: a life in history, ed. by David Greenberg, Moshik Temkin, and Mason Williams. Columbia, 2019. 216p index ISBN 9780231187244 cloth, $35.00; ISBN 9780231547161 ebook, $34.99
56-4063
E175
CIP
Brinkley has been at the forefront of liberal historiography since his days at Harvard. He is a son of David Brinkley, the famous newsman, originally of the "Huntley-Brinkley Report" (NBC) and later ABC. As an honor for his scholarship and especially his professorial career as a teacher and innovator, his colleagues, former students, and professional historians and journalists have combined to edit a unique volume on his life as a professional historian. Brinkley has edited and contributed to many college textbooks, most notably later his own The Unfinished Nation, for which he was interviewed on C-Span Booknotes (August 31, 1993). In it and the subsequent interview one views the breadth of knowledge of Brinkley, reflected in his New Deal works Voices of Protest (1983), Liberalism and Its Discontents (1998), and The End of Reform (CH, Jul'95, 32-6407). He makes it clear Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was groundbreaking but not without significant faults that led to further depression in the late 1930s. But he also has been unique as a liberal scholar in recognizing the force of conservatism in the US during the Reagan years. This celebration of Brinkley allows the layman to appreciate the man and the academic, but it is recommended for serious scholars of US history. Summing Up: ** Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.--A. M. Mayer, College of Staten Island
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Mayer, A.M. "Alan Brinkley: a life in history." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, vol. 56, no. 10, June 2019, p. 1285. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A589126573/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=99b3a387. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.
JOHN LEWIS: A Life, by David Greenberg
John Lewis was enrolled in a seminary in the Jim Crow city of Nashville when he embraced the belief that allowing himself to be beaten nearly to death in public would hasten the collapse of Southern apartheid.
In 1960, Lewis and his contemporaries carried that spirit into the sit-in campaign that forced Nashville to integrate its ''white only'' lunch counters. The following year, young protesters experienced homicidal levels of brutality when they boarded southbound Freedom Ride buses to challenge segregation in interstate transportation. When Lewis's bus reached Montgomery, Ala., passengers were savaged by a white mob whose members carried every conceivable weapon -- including bricks, chains, tire irons and baseball bats. Outside Anniston, Ala., Klansmen firebombed another bus and held its exit doors shut with the aim of burning the passengers alive.
The battering Lewis received four years later during the ''Bloody Sunday'' voting rights march in Selma, Ala., stands out for what happened next. Congress responded to the barbaric spectacle of state troopers bludgeoning demonstrators by finally outlawing the methods that the South had long used to prevent millions of Black people from registering to vote. Lewis was recovering from a fractured skull when Lyndon Johnson summoned him to Washington for the signing of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the civil rights movement's holy grail. L.B.J. admonished Lewis to get the white South ''by the balls'' -- by registering legions of Black people to vote -- and to ''squeeze, squeeze 'em till they hurt.''
Even as Lewis celebrated, he was under siege in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the potent civil rights organization whose chairmanship he held. His critics within the group complained that their chairman was too chummy with the white man in the White House and mocked him for rushing to have his suits cleaned whenever the president called. A SNCC faction led by the charismatic Black nationalist Stokely Carmichael had rejected the doctrines of interracial cooperation and Gandhian nonviolence to which Lewis had devoted himself. In the spring of 1966, the faction shoved Lewis aside and elected the fiery Carmichael to lead them.
As the historian David Greenberg writes in ''John Lewis,'' his panoramic and richly insightful biography, the former chairman ''found himself, at age 26, with no job, unmarried and unsure what to do with his life. The movement to which he had devoted his adult life was veering away from the ideals that had animated it. To remain in the struggle, he would have to find another path.''
The haloed sainthood attributed to Lewis at his funeral four years ago was by no means evident the day SNCC showed him the door. Greenberg argues that his subject achieved the stature of legend only after his memoir ''Walking With the Wind'' was published to rapturous acclaim in 1998, when he was entering his second decade as the congressman from Georgia's Fifth District, a position he would hold for the rest of his life.
Greenberg, who teaches history at Rutgers University, makes us privy to the alchemy that transformed a shy Alabama farm boy into a central voice of the movement that drove a dagger into the heart of Jim Crow. This biography sets a new standard by giving Lewis's post-civil-rights story the depth of attention it deserves -- and showing how our mild-mannered seminarian submerged his pacifist tendencies enough to succeed in the bare-knuckled world of electoral politics.
After parting with his beloved SNCC, Lewis tried working in New York but found the city ''too big'' and ''too hopeless.'' He returned to Atlanta, driven by nostalgia for a simpler Southern life and a vague longing to get elected to some office. He envied his SNCC friend, the Atlantan Julian Bond, who had been propelled into the Georgia Legislature by the Voting Rights Act.
Lewis regained his sea legs in Atlanta as the head of the nonprofit Voter Education Project. After Bond joined the organization's board of directors, the two toured the South together, urging Black people to register. They became known to friends and family as ''the Civil Rights Twins.''
Lewis's contacts among Black Southern voters -- and his status as a symbol of the voting rights struggle itself -- made him a coveted ally for white Democrats with presidential aspirations (including, eventually, Jimmy Carter and the Clintons). He became even more of an asset in the 1970s, when he started returning to Selma to re-enact the ''Bloody Sunday'' march. These widely publicized visits elevated his personal profile and strengthened his hand as he pressed Congress to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act.
Lewis was well positioned to run when the Fifth Congressional District seat fell open in 1986, but Bond saw the seat as his by divine right. The contest turned into a clash of classes. Black elites lined up behind the tall, light-skinned and well-educated Bond, and urged the short, dark-skinned and poorly spoken Lewis to bow out. No doubt these slights reminded Lewis of the SNCC revolt 20 years earlier -- but this time, he was having none of it. The more the lightly colored elites demeaned him, the harder he worked.
When the two faced off in debates, Lewis mercilessly attacked his old friend for refusing to submit to a drug test, playing on rumors of a cocaine addiction. Wounded, Bond asked if Lewis had cared for him during their Selma days -- or had he harbored ill will even then? Lewis responded icily that the campaign was ''not a referendum on friendship'' but a referendum ''on the future of our country.'' By the end of the evening, the friendship between the Civil Rights Twins was dead and buried.
As Greenberg shows through numerous interviews, Lewis quickly learned to send home pork to his district while becoming one of the best-loved members of Congress. By the '90s, he had also become something of a party apparatchik upon whom the Clintons and the Democratic establishment generally could depend. In the 2008 presidential primaries, however, devotion to Hillary Clinton, who was locked in a tight battle with Barack Obama, nearly cost him his sinecure.
Black voters who had remained with Clinton out of suspicion that Obama would fade shifted toward him when primary results proved his candidacy viable. After Obama took most of the South -- including Lewis's district -- on Super Tuesday, pressure mounted on the hero of Selma to switch his allegiance. Younger Black voters in particular saw Lewis's support for Clinton as a form of betrayal. When a young rival stepped forward to challenge the Lion of Selma for his seat, the recruit was widely assumed to represent the Obama team's handiwork. For the first time, it looked as if Lewis might end his days as a former congressman. As the maelstrom broke around him, he complained to his staff that he was ''worth more dead than alive.''
After a period of anguished indecision, Lewis pledged his support to the surging Obama, but never gained admission to the candidate's inner circle. As ''effusive as Obama was about Lewis in public,'' Greenberg writes, those around the candidate resented the latecomer for signing on only when he had no other choice. These contretemps were of course set aside at the inauguration, where the saint of the voting rights movement was given a seat of honor. The ceremony over, Lewis gave the new president his program and asked him to sign it. When Lewis got it back, it read, ''Because of you, John.''
JOHN LEWIS: A Life | By David Greenberg | Simon & Schuster | 696 pp. | $35
Brent Staples is a member of the Times editorial board and the author of ''Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White.''
CAPTION(S):
PHOTO: Lewis and Obama in Selma, Ala., to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) This article appeared in print on page BR11.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Staples, Brent. "A Moral Force." The New York Times Book Review, 20 Oct. 2024, p. 11. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A812820435/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c7e158b1. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.
Greenberg, David JOHN LEWIS Simon & Schuster (NonFiction None) $35.00 10, 8 ISBN: 9781982142995
Comprehensive biography of the late civil rights leader and legislator.
John Lewis practically emerged from the womb with his habits fully formed: at a very early age, he became entranced by books, taking as a lifelong talisman the poem "Invictus" and its closing: "I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul." Born in 1940 to tenant farmers in southeastern Alabama, Lewis came of age as the Civil Rights Movement was gathering force; while a student at the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, he helped organize lunch-counter sit-ins and even tried to organize an NAACP chapter on campus until warned that the white churches funding the college "would never tolerate it." Organizing voter drives during Freedom Summer 1964, Lewis practiced Martin Luther King Jr.'s doctrine of nonviolence, which he held to for the rest of his life, even as he endured beatings by white supremacists and police. He made news for refusing to give in and later, having taken the case for civil rights to first John and then Robert Kennedy, for entering national legislative politics. Greenberg allows that Lewis could be a contrarian with a radical edge; he stated at the March on Washington, for example, "We are involved in a serious social revolution." He remained a force for progressivism in Congress--and, Greenberg notes, an early and strong ally of the LGBTQ+ community and advocate for the environment. Greenberg also points to uncomfortable moments, including Lewis' divisive primary race against fellow Black progressive Julian Bond, whose enmity extended unto death (Lewis was not invited to Bond's funeral). Greenberg also writes perceptively about how Lewis finessed his friendship with Hillary Clinton to become a champion of Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential race and how Lewis became a leader in the repudiation of Trump-era white supremacism before his death in 2020.
An exemplary life, and an exemplary biography that will rekindle readers' commitment to racial justice.
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"Greenberg, David: JOHN LEWIS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A806452695/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b131dee9. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.