REP. JOHN LEWIS: …In Selma, Alabama, in March of 1965, about 600 of us decided to take a peaceful, orderly nonviolent walk from Selma to Montgomery to dramatize to the nation that people of color wanted the right to vote, to participate in a democratic process. In Selma only 2.1 percent of blacks of voting age were registered to vote. You could only attempt to get in to take the so-called “literacy” test on the first and third Mondays of each month. And we all started walking in twos.

…On the other side at the foot of the bridge [outside Selma] we saw Sheriff Clark, the sheriff of Dallas County in Selma, with his posse. We saw men on horseback, and we heard a man say — Major John Clough of the Alabama State troopers – “this is an unlawful march, and I give you three minutes to disperse, and return to your church.” In less than a minute and a half he said, “Troopers advance.” And these men came toward us, beating us with nightsticks, bullwhips, trampling us with horses… They used tear gas. And that day became known as “Bloody Sunday.” …I was beaten. I had a concussion. …I thought that day I was going to die. I think I saw death.

DAVID GERGEN: I found it remarkable in your book and, indeed, in your conversation today how little hate there is. You never expressed a word of hatred for those who were beating you.

REP. JOHN LEWIS: Well, hate is too heavy a burden to bear. And if you accept nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living, then you must be true, you must be consistent. Because if you only accept nonviolence as a technique or as a tactic, it becomes like a faucet. You can turn it on and turn it off. You have to go around deciding who you’re going to hate and who you’re going to love today, who you’re going to like or dislike, and I can truly say that I don’t have any ill feeling or malice or hatred toward anyone that attacked me or had me arrested or jailed during that period. I saw the men and women that engaged in the violence and the mob, whether it was a Bull Connor in Birmingham or a Sheriff Clark in Selma, as victims. We all were victims.

DAVID GERGEN: Selma, of course, led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and many other changes. You speak in the book frequently about a notion from Martin Luther King that moved you so much in those days, a notion of “beloved community.” What has happened to the beloved community in America today?

REP. JOHN LEWIS: We have not yet created the beloved community. I think that idea — it’s still in the process of becoming. But we cannot give up on it, and some people will say that the idea of the beloved community, the idea of an inter-racial democracy, the idea of integration itself, some people will say it’s old fashioned, it’s obsolete, it is out of date. But I consider it one of those immutable principles that we shouldn’t give up, we shouldn’t deviate from it. We have an obligation, I think, as Americans, to create one family, one house, one community, an American community, the American house, the American family.

This interview of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) was conducted by David Gergen on the Public Broadcasting System’s Lehrer News Hour on July 7, 1998. Lewis was one of the key leaders of the US Civil Rights Movement. He is the author of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.