In Chap­ter Twen­ty, titled “On the Hill,” John Lewis embarks on a sig­nif­i­cant jour­ney. With a bas­ket of cham­pagne, jam­bal­aya, and bal­loons, he arrives at the Peachtree train sta­tion with Lil­lian and their son, John-Miles, for his swear­ing-in in Wash­ing­ton. The group trav­els on Amtrak, bring­ing along friends who trans­form the trip into a cel­e­bra­tion. Reflect­ing on his tumul­tuous past as he gazes into the dark­ness from the train, Lewis con­veys grat­i­tude for his strug­gles, stat­ing, “The beat­ings, the arrests—it was all worth it.”

Once in Wash­ing­ton, Lewis arrives at Union Sta­tion and feels a sense of nos­tal­gia as he gazes at the Capi­tol dome, rem­i­nis­cent of his first vis­it in 1961. His assigned office in the Can­non Build­ing, fur­nished with red car­na­tions and Piper Sono­ma cham­pagne, lacks tele­phones and is filled with type­writ­ers. As he set­tles into the polit­i­cal land­scape, he finds him­self amid Georgia’s del­e­ga­tion, dubbed “Red­neck Row.” They cel­e­brate with an ini­tial par­ty in the Cau­cus Room.

On the day of his swear­ing-in, Lewis faces the Capitol’s maze, get­ting lost until res­cued by Sen­a­tor Sam Nunn. He express­es excite­ment about his fel­low fresh­men, includ­ing Joseph Kennedy II and Mike Espy, mark­ing a mile­stone for the Con­gres­sion­al Black Cau­cus. Mean­while, Love Collins and Richard Ossoff work on staffing his office, eager to secure tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als for crit­i­cal posi­tions, while Lewis remains calm and uncon­cerned.

Despite some staffers feel­ing over­looked, Lewis nav­i­gates hir­ing with patience, ulti­mate­ly appoint­ing Clarence Bish­op as chief of staff, who faces chal­lenges when bal­anc­ing Lewis’s ambi­tions with Lillian’s vision for a youth­ful office envi­ron­ment. In this ear­ly phase, Lewis’s leg­isla­tive agen­da unfolds amid ongo­ing efforts to main­tain per­son­al con­nec­tions with promi­nent col­leagues as they curate their south­ern pol­i­tics vis-à-vis the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Lead­er­ship Coun­cil.

As the nar­ra­tive pro­gress­es, it becomes evi­dent that Lewis’s jour­ney is laden with the expec­ta­tions of his­to­ry but also reveal­ing the com­plex­i­ties of his polit­i­cal rela­tion­ships and per­son­al com­mit­ments. By the end of the chap­ter, Lewis emerges as a ded­i­cat­ed leader, grap­pling with issues of race, pow­er, and com­mu­ni­ty, poised to make his mark in Con­gress amidst chang­ing polit­i­cal tides.