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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘Good Trouble’ is a tribute to John Lewis

Dan Webster

Last year my wife and I took a road trip through the South. We flew to Memphis, then drove to Alabama, staying in Birmingham and Montgomery, before driving through Mississippi, spending the night in Oxford.

It was an educational trip, one that blended real places with the history that I had read about and the real-life incidents that I had watched unfold on television news reports.

One of those incidents involved the beatings of Freedom Riders, those civil-rights activists who rode on buses through the South in an attempt to flout the laws requiring the segregation of races. My wife and I toured the former Montgomery bus station, now a museum, in front of which one of the more notable beatings took place.

The one that involved John Lewis, one of the Freedom Riders who since 1987 has been serving in the U.S. Congress.

On July 3rd, the Magic Lantern will make available for streaming the documentary film "John Lewis: Good Trouble," directed by Dawn Porter, which explores Lewis' life and career as both a politician and as a social activist.

"It’s easy to look at 'John Lewis: Good Trouble' and be in awe of this statesman’s deeds, of what the octogenarian survived to advance civil rights in an America that fought him — and still fights him — at every turn," wrote critic Marc Bernardin in Entertainment Weekly.

Funds raised by the screening will go to help the Spokane chapter of the NAACP.