PROGRAM

In 2012, Roosevelt House had the distinct honor of welcoming the late, great Congressmen John Lewis for a wide-ranging discussion of the Civil Rights movement to which he gave so much of his extraordinary life—and his presence reverberates at the house to this day. While his passing in 2020 may have left an unfillable void not just in the conscience of Congress, but in the soul of the nation, it is an honor—once again—to put the icon of Civil Rights front and center at Roosevelt House. To help us reanimate and engage with his precious memory, we are pleased to welcome none other than his authorized biographer David Greenberg, whose monumental and acclaimed John Lewis: A Life was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2024. He will be in conversation with award-winning historian, author, and popular previous Roosevelt House guest, Saladin Ambar.

Drawing on interviews with the man himself and hundreds of others who knew him throughout his life, as well as dozens of archives and never-before-used FBI files, John Lewis: A Life is the definitive, comprehensive chronicle of Lewis’s life and career. Born into poverty in rural Alabama, Lewis would go on to become second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. A Freedom Rider who helped integrate bus stations in the South, a leader of the Nashville sit-in movement, the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, and the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lewis is also widely remembered as the survivor of a nearly fatal beating by Alabama state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on “Bloody Sunday.”

Thoroughly researched and dramatically told, Greenberg’s biography traces Lewis’s life through the post-Civil Rights years, when he headed the Voter Education Project, which enrolled millions of African American voters across the South. The book reveals the little-known story of his political ascent—first locally in Atlanta, and then as a member of Congress. Tapped to be a part of the Democratic leadership in Congress, he earned respect on both sides of the aisle for the sacrifices he had made on behalf of nonviolent integration in the South, and came to be known as the “conscience of the Congress.”

With new details about his personal and professional relationships, John Lewis: A Life is the authoritative biography of an icon whose heroism during the Civil Rights movement helped to bring the country a new birth of freedom.

David Greenberg is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University and a frequent commentator on historical and political affairs. He is the author or editor of several books on American history and politics including Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image and Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. Formerly acting editor of The New Republic and then a columnist for Slate, Greenberg now writes regularly for Politico, Liberties, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. His work has also been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and the Wall Street Journal. In support of this book, Greenberg won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography. He holds a PhD in history from Columbia University and a BA from Yale and lives with his family in Manhattan.

Saladin Ambar is Professor of Political Science and Senior Scholar at the Center on the American Governor at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, where he teaches courses in American politics. His latest book, Stars and Shadows: The Politics of Interracial Friendship from Jefferson to Obama (Oxford University Press, 2022), won the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Best Book in Government and Politics. Dr. Ambar’s Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era (Oxford University Press, 2014) was nominated for a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and is currently in development for a feature film by Number 9 Films in the UK. This October, Diversion Books will publish Ambar’s Three Murders on the Mississippi: A Thousand Days That Made Abraham Lincoln, which focuses on a series of racially motivated lynchings at the heart of Lincoln’s first major political speech. He serves as a scholarly advisor to the Lincoln Presidential Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum. He is a father of 17-year-old triplets and lives in Philadelphia.