Civil Rights Icon Bernard Lafayette on His Friend John Lewis, Freedom Rides & Practicing Nonviolence

We revisit civil rights leader and Congressmember John Lewis's early years of activism with Bernard Lafayette, one of Lewis's closest friends and collaborators. Lafayette participated with Lewis in the first Freedom Rides of 1961 as they attempted to integrate buses and faced brutal beatings by white mobs, and was a fellow leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Lewis knew how to relate to people who were different from him and who had different orientations, different values, different philosophies, and that's why he was such a great leader," Lafayette says. He found a way to make a way."