Skip to content
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • Moments Moments Moments, current page.

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
studentactivism's profile
Angus Johnston
Angus Johnston
Angus Johnston
Verified account
@studentactivism

Tweets

Angus JohnstonVerified account

@studentactivism

Historian of, and advocate for, American student activism. CUNY prof.

New York City
studentactivism.net
Joined February 2009

Tweets

  • © 2021 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

    John Lewis was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington—where MLK gave the "I have a dream" speech—and the speech Lewis wrote that day was so incendiary that the march organizers wouldn't let him deliver it as written.

    5:56 AM - 18 Jul 2020
    • 16,811 Retweets
    • 68,012 Likes
    • Orinthea S. Smith 🅴🅼🅼🅰 🆆🅸🅻🅻🅸🅰🅼🆂 🍓 EdledaMaria Jencita Aaron Cowan Katy Flynn Kels🦋 Brenda Beecher Eleanor Jane
    359 replies 16,811 retweets 68,012 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        On the day before the march, the Catholic archbishop of Washington DC, who was scheduled to give the opening invocation, received a copy of John Lewis’ speech. He freaked out.

        10 replies 327 retweets 4,300 likes
        Show this thread
      3. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Arguments over Lewis' speech continued during the march itself—even while speakers were addressing the crowd from the Lincoln Memorial, Lewis was huddled in a guard station inside, by the Abraham Lincoln statue, with Dr. King, A. Philip Randolph, and others, negotiating changes.

        5 replies 301 retweets 4,129 likes
        Show this thread
      4. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Lewis was 23 at the time, by the way. King was 34. A. Phillip Randolph was 73.

        4 replies 286 retweets 4,555 likes
        Show this thread
      5. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        In the end, the group negotiated more than a dozen significant changes to the speech, each of which moderated its tone and substance and many of which have particular resonance today. The final typed version was completed just moments before Lewis took the stage.

        2 replies 325 retweets 4,120 likes
        Show this thread
      6. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        So what did they change? I'm glad you asked.

        6 replies 277 retweets 3,807 likes
        Show this thread
      7. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        The first problem came in the speech's second sentence, where Lewis said the movement couldn't fully support JFK's civil rights bill, because it was "too little, too late." That got changed to "we support it with great reservation."

        2 replies 434 retweets 5,305 likes
        Show this thread
      8. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Why didn't Lewis support the civil rights act "wholeheartedly"? Well, this line, appearing immediately after the one above, gives an indication: "There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality." That line was struck entirely.

        15 replies 1,863 retweets 11,588 likes
        Show this thread
      9. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        And right after that, a line referring to the bill's failure to "protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses" had the words "in the South" added to it.

        5 replies 521 retweets 6,087 likes
        Show this thread
      10. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        (On several occasions, including right around here, references were added to the bill "in its present form"—not entirely unreasonably. The bill wasn't finished, and it was seen as more productive to push for improvements rather than reject it as inadequate.)

        2 replies 233 retweets 3,855 likes
        Show this thread
      11. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Next, Lewis had written that the Kennedy civil rights bill ("in its present form" in the final version) would not "protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear in a police state."

        3 replies 369 retweets 4,313 likes
        Show this thread
      12. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Danville had been the site of ongoing civil rights demonstrations and boycotts that spring and summer, and the city government had reacted brutally—beating protesters, many of them high school students, using fire hoses on them, cramming them into overcrowded jails.

        3 replies 309 retweets 3,767 likes
        Show this thread
      13. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Lewis' elders had him change "the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear in a police state" to "...must live in constant fear OF a police state."

        5 replies 355 retweets 3,980 likes
        Show this thread
      14. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Of all the changes Lewis had foisted on him that day, that one is maybe the most fascinating to me. "In a police state" is an emphatic statement about lived conditions, explicitly naming what it meant, what it was, to be Black in the Jim Crow South.

        7 replies 440 retweets 5,284 likes
        Show this thread
      15. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        "Of," on the other hand, is both tempered and ambiguous—the fear of a police state is a fear of something external, and maybe even hypothetical. A tiny change, but one that carries incredible weight.

        6 replies 283 retweets 4,617 likes
        Show this thread
      16. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Next, Lewis went on to condemn the bill for not including voting rights protections. "As it stands now," his elders added, but that wouldn't be changed before the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Voting would have to wait for the Voting Rights Act the following year.

        1 reply 280 retweets 3,579 likes
        Show this thread
      17. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        (A great line that Lewis' handlers didn't change: "'One man, one vote!' is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours.")

        3 replies 317 retweets 4,301 likes
        Show this thread
      18. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        I would give a hell of a lot to have been a fly on the wall for any of the discussions between Lewis, King, and Randolph about the speech, but for the next big change more than (maybe) any other:

        5 replies 186 retweets 3,403 likes
        Show this thread
      19. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Lewis had written that "For the first time in one hundred years this nation is being awakened to the fact that segregation is evil and that it must be destroyed in all forms. Your presence today proves that you have been aroused to the point of action."

        7 replies 568 retweets 5,407 likes
        Show this thread
      20. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        They had him take that whole paragraph out.

        14 replies 263 retweets 2,948 likes
        Show this thread
      21. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        Imagine. You're John Lewis. You're 23. You've written that the nation is being awakened to the evils of segregation "for the first time in one hundred years." And then A. Philip Randolph puts his hand on your shoulder and looks you in the eye.

        3 replies 268 retweets 3,820 likes
        Show this thread
      22. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        I mean.pic.twitter.com/mGel5hxZ1K

        Screenshot of excerpt from Wikipedia article on the 1963 March on Washington, detailing the importance of A. Philip Randolph's activism and organizing since 1941 in preparing the way for the march.
        5 replies 191 retweets 2,768 likes
        Show this thread
      23. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        In the next paragraph, Lewis had written that "this nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromise and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation."

        16 replies 546 retweets 4,670 likes
        Show this thread
      24. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        They had him change that to "by and large, American politics is dominated by politicians who build their careers on immoral compromise [etc.]" and then add "There are exceptions, of course. We salute those."

        3 replies 222 retweets 3,022 likes
        Show this thread
      25. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        (I feel a little bad only concentrating on the changes here—the speech itself is amazing, even as delivered, and some of the stuff that stayed in is bracing even today. Full links to everything coming at the end of the thread.)

        6 replies 212 retweets 3,575 likes
        Show this thread
      26. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        That said, however, the next long passage to be excised in its entirety was fire:

        1 reply 181 retweets 2,496 likes
        Show this thread
      27. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        "I want to know, which side is the federal government on? The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery."

        3 replies 715 retweets 6,145 likes
        Show this thread
      28. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        (Damn.)

        8 replies 100 retweets 2,537 likes
        Show this thread
      29. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        "The nonviolent revolution is saying, 'We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting for hundreds of years.'"

        2 replies 424 retweets 4,159 likes
        Show this thread
      30. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        "We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside of any national structure, that could and would assure us a victory."

        7 replies 429 retweets 4,040 likes
        Show this thread
      31. Angus Johnston‏Verified account @studentactivism 18 Jul 2020

        More rhetorical trimming: "To those who have said, 'Be patient and wait,' we must say that 'patience' is a dirty and nasty word. We must say that we cannot be patient," changed to "To those who have said, 'Be patient and wait,' we have long said that we cannot be patient."

        29 replies 402 retweets 4,049 likes
        Show this thread
      32. Show replies

    Loading seems to be taking a while.

    Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

      Promoted Tweet

      false

      • © 2021 Twitter
      • About
      • Help Center
      • Terms
      • Privacy policy
      • Cookies
      • Ads info