To see the voters that made up that coalition

John Lewis was encouraging voters in Ohio to re-elect President Barack Obama, he heard words that took him back 47 years.

It was a time when African-Americans like Lewis weren’t guaranteed the right to vote, when they organized, marched, sang and bled for that right. Lewis himself was beaten unconscious by baton-wielding Alabama state troopers on a bridge in Selma in March 1965.

At an early voting site in downtown Cincinnati on a dreary morning this fall, “one young lady said to me, ‘Congressman, I started to get out of this line, but I thought about the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and I said I have to stand here,’ ” Lewis said.

Lewis, a legend of the civil rights movement who got his start as a college student in Nashville, was back in the city Thursday, two days after Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, won a second term.

The congressman from Atlanta said he didn’t cry this time, as he had when Obama made history in 2008. But he still found the president’s victory stirring.

“I was very moved,” he said in an interview after honoring his old friend, Tennessean Chairman Emeritus John Seigenthaler, at a luncheon.

“To see the voters that made up that coalition, it represents another major step down a very long road to create a more perfect union, to create a truly multiracial, democratic society.”

He said the right to vote was something he and many others fought for, culminating in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. In his memoir, Walking with the Wind, Lewis recalls Johnson telling him at the White House that day, “Now John, you’ve got to go back and get all those folks registered.”

That was why he “took it so personally” when he saw many states, including Tennessee, implementing laws that he says make it harder to vote by imposing photo ID requirements.

“It’s sort of sad, almost painful to see people wanting to revert back to another period,” he said. “We’ve made too much progress to go back, so we have to continue to push forward.”

Supporters of voter ID laws say they discourage fraud at the ballot box.

Seigenthaler’s wife, son and daughter-in-law held a $250-per-person fund-raiser Thursday evening for Lewis, who was elected Tuesday to his 14th term in Congress.

Lewis praised Seigenthaler, a friend for more than 50 years, at Thursday’s luncheon, where Seigenthaler received the Joe Kraft Humanitarian Award from The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. Seigenthaler returned the favor, saying Lewis had done more to “change the moral fiber of this community” than anyone.

“When you look at John Lewis standing here, you don’t see the John Lewis I saw as a young reporter,” he said. “The blood he and others shed during those days has long since faded from those sidewalks. But I will tell you, it was their courage, it was their vision, it was their commitment to nonviolence, it was their determination to make this a more livable city that helped us understand who we are today.“

While Obama has been criticized by some people for not doing enough for African-Americans during his first term, Lewis said he doesn’t agree.

“He’s the president of all Americans,” the congressman said. “He’s going to reach out during the next four years and try to create a better country, a more just society for all Americans.”

He said the country is already a much better place than it was when he was a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, a Freedom Rider, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a speaker during the March on Washington.

“It is so amazing, out of the ordinary, to see the distance we’ve come and the progress we’ve made,” Lewis said. “Some people say, ‘Well, you haven’t come that far, you haven’t made enough progress.’ The only thing I say is, ‘Come and walk in my shoes.’

“It’s a different world. To look out and see black men and women, white men and women, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Native Americans standing together, crying together as a result of the election.”

He paused amid the sound of plates clinking together as the catering crew cleared tables nearby.