John Lewis Was a Mighty American Soul

Charles P. Pierce remembers the life and legacy of John Lewis, who died Friday at 80. [Image] [Image]( John Lewis Was a Mighty American Soul Abraham Lincoln’s backside. I could never meet John Lewis without thinking of Abraham Lincoln’s backside, because, when asked about the great March on Washington in 1963, John Lewis always mentioned Abraham Lincoln’s backside. He was 23 years old then, the chairman of the new Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. He was two years distant from a stay in Mississippi’s notorious Parchman State Prison, the great, haunted place beneath a hundred blues songs, for the crime of using a white restroom. He was two years away from nearly being murdered by Alabama state troopers for the crime of wanting to vote. He was 23 and he was angry. The rhetoric John Lewis brought to Washington offered not peace, but a sword. The draft of his speech began with a furious accounting of all the shortcomings of the Civil Rights Act then pending in Congress at the other end of the National Mall. "In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration’s civil rights bill, for it is too little and too late. There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality." It called out the president who was watching on television a few blocks away. "The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it into the courts. Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens. The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won’t be a “cooling-off” period." And then, as a windup, John Lewis proposed to say: "We won’t stop now. All of the forces of Eastland, Bamett, Wallace and Thurmond won’t stop this revolution. The time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington. We will march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground — nonviolently. We shall fragment the South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of democracy. We will make the action of the past few months look petty. And I say to you, WAKE UP AMERICA!" This closing passage in particular unnerved the leaders of the March. So Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, and the other organizers took Lewis aside to try and convince him to tone the speech down. They looked for a place to work, and they found a small room inside the Lincoln Memorial. “Right under Mr. Lincoln’s backside,” Lewis always said, and then he would laugh. Nobody had a better right to laugh than he did. He wasn’t supposed to still be alive. He was supposed to have died on the shoulder of Highway 80 in Selma, Alabama, beaten to death by the forces of Alabama law. America tried to kill John Lewis several times, but he wouldn’t let it. He loved the promise of America too much to let its sinful reality end his life. He made it across the bridge and lived. He made it to Congress and fought. And, on Friday evening, John Lewis died, in his own time and in the proper way. He was 80 years old. [Read Charles P. Pierce's Full Obituary]( [Image] [Image]( Esquire’s Best Bars in America, 2020 What makes a bar an Esquire Best Bar?” It’s a question Esquire’s Culture & Lifestyle Director Kevin Sintumuang gets asked a lot, and he tends to dodge it, mainly because it’s so hard to answer in a satisfying and meaningful way. His canned reply is something like: a place that you love so much you can’t wait to experience it all over again. But if we’re being honest, that answer is a bit cliché—like a Yelp review presented by the Hallmark Channel. Sintumuang masked a cringe every time he said it. But damn if this pandemic hasn’t made that sentiment so true. And thus, It’s still his answer. Except now he really means it. Whether they’re open or not so open, we hope you’ll fall in love with this year’s best bars, and all past (and future) places in our ever-growing hall of fame, when you can. [Read the Full Story](  [Image]( The $90 Levi's 501 '93 Is Proof the OG Jeans Remain Undefeated Here's a very abridged version of denim history for you: In 1873, Levi Strauss partners with Jacob Davis to file a patent for the process of putting rivets on work pants for the first time. A few years later, and voila: blue jeans as we know 'em are born. The rest is all commentary. To this day, the Levi's 501—inarguably the most iconic pant style produced by the brand—remains the standard-bearer by which all other denim is judged, and whether you're looking to buy your first pair or your fifteenth, the recently tweaked 501 '93 more than upholds its storied legacy. Esquire’s Avidan Grossman explains why it makes them the latest subject of the Esquire Endorsement. [Read the Full Story]( [Image]( How One of Philadelphia’s Favorite Pizza Joints Survived COVID-19 On Monday, March 16, when Philadelphia bars and dining-service restaurants were ordered to close by 5 p.m., Pizzeria Stella chef and owner, Shane Solomon, could not just wait it out. He had to do something now. So he and his longtime collaborator, manager Treacy Mueller, put Stella on their backs and dragged it forward, converting their restaurant into takeaway only, with a shared mission of earning enough money to re-employ members of their working family. Francine Maroukian goes inside the story of two people moving mountains to keep a beloved restaurant alive in the worst of times. [Read the Full Story](  [Image](. ) Alden Ehrenreich Has Been to Space and Back Three years ago, Alden Ehrenreich did a very weird thing. He flew to Europe in the middle of winter to film a space movie. He dressed up as a space cowboy and hung out with a seven-foot-tall dog who wears a bandolier and communicates via guttural vocal fry. Alden, as this space cowboy, said things like parsec and thermal detonator and coaxium and wailed WOO-HOO. Now, he’s making his big return: Starring in a TV adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which will headline Peacock, NBC’s new streaming service, when it launches on July 15. It’ll be the first time most people have seen Ehrenreich in the two years since he’s reentered orbit. Esquire’s Brady Langmann caught up with Ehrenreich about where he is now, and where he went in the years after playing Han Solo. [Read the Full Story]( [Image]( Jaws Is an Undisputed Masterpiece. So How Did It Produce One of the Worst Sequels Ever Made? It was on this date, 33 years ago, that a seemingly important film opened in theaters. A film that, in its own way, would end up being almost as memorable as Steven Spielberg’s JAWS, but for all the wrong reasons. We’re talking, of course, about 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge. If June 20, 1975 marked the birth of an indelible and undeniable cinematic classic, it was on July 17, 1987, that that franchise finally died—and not of natural causes, but rather of malpractice and gross incompetence. Chris Nashawaty explains what happened three decades ago that harpooned the beloved shark franchise. [Read the Full Story](  Follow Us       [Unsubscribe](  [Privacy Notice](  esquire.com ©2020 Hearst Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Email Privacy, 300 W 57th St., Fl. 19 (sta 1-1), New York, NY 10019   Â