Chap­ter 1: The Boy from Troy details the ear­ly years of John Lewis, offer­ing insight into his for­ma­tive years in Pike Coun­ty, Alaba­ma. Born on Feb­ru­ary 21, 1940, John stood out in his fam­i­ly for his love of read­ing and his strong desire for knowl­edge, traits that set him apart from his sib­lings. His father, Eddie Lewis, often described him as a “pecu­liar boy,” a label that reflect­ed John’s deep curios­i­ty and ded­i­ca­tion to learn­ing. His fam­i­ly sup­port­ed his inter­ests, par­tic­u­lar­ly his sis­ter, Ethel Mae, and his father, who encour­aged him to read books like Robert Louis Stevenson’s works and biogra­phies of influ­en­tial African Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Book­er T. Washington’s Up from Slav­ery, which became one of his favorites.

The chap­ter also traces John’s fam­i­ly her­itage, reveal­ing that his great-great-grand­par­ents, Tobias and Eliz­a­beth Carter, had been grant­ed a small piece of land after the Civ­il War, a tes­ta­ment to the com­plex­i­ties of post-slav­ery life in Amer­i­ca. Despite ini­tial suc­cess, by the time John was born, the Carters had been reduced to work­ing as ten­ant farm­ers for a white landown­er, Josh Copeland. This shift from landown­er­ship to ten­ant farm­ing rep­re­sents the strug­gles faced by many African Amer­i­cans after the Civ­il War, a real­i­ty that would deeply influ­ence John’s under­stand­ing of eco­nom­ic and racial inequal­i­ty. His family’s dif­fi­cul­ties were a prod­uct of a sys­tem that main­tained racial and eco­nom­ic divi­sions long after the for­mal abo­li­tion of slav­ery, shap­ing John’s ear­ly per­cep­tions of jus­tice and equal­i­ty.

John’s upbring­ing was marked by the harsh real­i­ties of pover­ty and the sys­temic racism of the Jim Crow South. The Lewis fam­i­ly lived with­out mod­ern con­ve­niences; they boiled water for baths and used out­door toi­lets, typ­i­cal of many Black fam­i­lies at the time. Despite these hard­ships, Eddie Lewis instilled a sense of dig­ni­ty in his chil­dren, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of safe­ty, food, and respect in a world where vio­lence, par­tic­u­lar­ly from groups like the Ku Klux Klan, loomed as a con­stant threat. This back­drop of fear and hard­ship helped John devel­op a resilient char­ac­ter, one that would dri­ve his life­long com­mit­ment to civ­il rights and social jus­tice.

The per­va­sive racism and seg­re­ga­tion of the South deeply impact­ed John’s world­view. As a child, he expe­ri­enced first­hand the dis­crim­i­na­tion that restrict­ed access to edu­ca­tion, health­care, and pub­lic facil­i­ties based on race. These expe­ri­ences were not just inci­dents of indi­vid­ual prej­u­dice but part of a larg­er sys­tem of racial injus­tice that John would lat­er devote his life to com­bat­ing. His expo­sure to such inequal­i­ties at a young age fueled his desire to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo and fight for equal rights for all peo­ple, a cause that would define his future activism.

John’s reli­gious upbring­ing, large­ly shaped by his moth­er, Willie Mae, played a cen­tral role in form­ing his sense of moral con­vic­tion and hope. Raised in the church, he was inspired by the teach­ings of Chris­tian­i­ty, which empha­sized love, jus­tice, and equal­i­ty, prin­ci­ples that would guide his future work. His ear­ly ambi­tion to become a min­is­ter reflect­ed his desire to serve both his com­mu­ni­ty and a high­er pur­pose. This aspi­ra­tion was not only about preach­ing but also about empow­er­ing oth­ers to fight for social change, and it was this vision that ulti­mate­ly pro­pelled him toward high­er edu­ca­tion and a career in activism.

The chap­ter con­cludes with John’s deter­mi­na­tion to pur­sue edu­ca­tion as a means of bet­ter­ing him­self and his com­mu­ni­ty. His ambi­tion to attend sem­i­nary school was root­ed in his belief that through edu­ca­tion, he could become a more effec­tive advo­cate for racial equal­i­ty. This thirst for knowl­edge, paired with his com­mit­ment to social jus­tice, laid the foun­da­tion for his future role as one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures in the civ­il rights move­ment, shap­ing his jour­ney as a leader ded­i­cat­ed to chal­leng­ing inequal­i­ty in all its forms.