May 23, 2016 2 min read

The 1986 Democratic primary contest in Georgia’s 5th congressional district, which encompasses much of Atlanta and its immediate suburbs, was one for the ages.

It pitted two contrasting leaders of the civil rights movement against one another: the smooth, eloquent Julian Bond, the son of a university president, and John Lewis, the son of Alabama sharecroppers who had a childhood so isolated that he only saw two white people by the time he turned 6.

Bond narrowly triumphed in the primary, but not by enough to avoid a runoff election. The second time around, Lewis edged Bond, more or less arguing he was a workhorse, not a showhorse.

In the decades after, Bond settled into a series of academic and nonprofit jobs and was briefly the subject of unwanted publicity because of a nasty divorce that included allegations of cocaine abuse. He died last year of vascular disease.

Lewis remains in Congress, 30 years after his unlikely victory. He was keynote speaker at Washington & Jefferson College’s commencement ceremony Saturday, and offered valuable advice to the 2016 graduating class:

“In the final analysis, we are all one people, we are all one family, we are all one house,” Lewis said. “We all live in the same house, not just the American house but the world house. Maybe our foremothers and forefathers all came to this great land in different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.”

He concluded, “Dream dreams, keep the faith and never hate, for hate is too heavy a burden to bear.”

That’s advice we all should heed.