Activism and Ministry
Lewis, a group peacemaker, was arrested during a downtown march for progress while at ITC. After leaving Atlanta, he led protest marches for minority employment and against school closures for Black children. He began preaching sermons at age twelve and later led churches in his native South Carolina after graduating from ITC in 1965.
Community Engagement
Lewis hosted gospel music radio shows, raised eight children (ordaining one as a minister), and helped lead the Congress of Racial Equality.
Advocacy and Charitable Efforts
In the 1970s, Lewis advocated against the busing of Black children into White communities. He operated bingo-funded charities for crime prevention and job training, overcoming licensing challenges despite paperwork errors. Both sides filed suit, but Lewis persisted, saying, “We overcame.”
Quotations
Defining other Ministers
When I sat down with Lewis in South Carolina in 2019, he identified the other men: himself, Albert Dunn, and George Willis. Lewis was viewing the footage for the first time. “Lester had vowed he would not serve Negroes,” Lewis said to me. “We were adamant we were going to integrate his restaurant and make his words a lie.”
Greene, Ronnie. Heart of Atlanta: Five Black Pastors and the Supreme Court Victory for Integration (p. 25). Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.
Summer of 1964
“It was a sad time,” says one of the men, Woodrow T. Lewis. “As students there, we were very adamant about making changes. We were kind of militant. We were young, we were strong, we were abrasive, and we wanted to get out and do something and fight for the right of our own Black citizens. We could hardly believe what was going on, the atmosphere of the people, the White Ku Klux Klan.”
Lewis and another schoolmate, Charles Wells, immediately agreed to join Dunn and Willis. They would take on the beast. “Dunn, Willis, Wells, and I were all classmates. We flocked together closely,” Lewis says. “We could relate because we were from the same denomination.”
Greene, Ronnie. Heart of Atlanta: Five Black Pastors and the Supreme Court Victory for Integration (p. 52,53). Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.
Description of Pickrick
“There was a mob of Whites standing there when we drove up to the Pickrick restaurant yard,” Lewis says. “Willis was very, very angry and Dunn too. They were saying, ‘Look at them, look at them, look at them.’ Willis said, ‘I should take this car and drive it right through the crowd.’”
Greene, Ronnie. Heart of Atlanta: Five Black Pastors and the Supreme Court Victory for Integration (pp. 83-84). Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.