--- title: John Lewis on Martin Luther King Jr. and Necessary Trouble description: Rep. John Lewis explains how Martin Luther King Jr. taught him the importance of creating necessary trouble and remaining hopeful. canonical: https://time.com/5087349/why-getting-into-trouble-is-necessary-to-make-change/ author: John Lewis article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-01-04T11:34:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:53:47.947Z article:section: Ideas og:title: John Lewis on Martin Luther King Jr. and Necessary Trouble og:description: Rep. John Lewis explains how Martin Luther King Jr. taught him the importance of creating necessary trouble and remaining hopeful. og:url: https://time.com/5087349/why-getting-into-trouble-is-necessary-to-make-change/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4d1ccafea6482457/6988f64cfb4eacd431895185/optimist-issue-john-lewis-necessary-trouble.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3040 og:image:height: 1710 og:image:alt: optimist-issue-john-lewis-necessary-trouble og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: John Lewis on Martin Luther King Jr. and Necessary Trouble twitter:description: Rep. John Lewis explains how Martin Luther King Jr. taught him the importance of creating necessary trouble and remaining hopeful. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4d1ccafea6482457/6988f64cfb4eacd431895185/optimist-issue-john-lewis-necessary-trouble.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Getting Into Trouble is Necessary to Make Change > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Matin Luther King Monument [Watch (HLS stream): Matin Luther King Monument](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/9KFWGgDd.m3u8) (3:08)  _Published 2018-01-15. Martin Luther King Monument_ by [John Lewis](https://time.com/author/john-lewis/) ## John Lewis Jan 4, 2018 11:34 AM UTC  John Lewis (second from left) joins American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King in a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery, March 30, 1965. John Lewis (second from left) joins American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King in a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery, March 30, 1965. William Lovelace/Express—Getty Images by [John Lewis](https://time.com/author/john-lewis/) ## John Lewis Jan 4, 2018 11:34 AM UTC I’ve seen unbelievable changes during the past 50 or 60 years. When people say, “Nothing has changed,” I feel like saying, “Come and walk in my shoes.” I truly believe that if there is faith and hope and determination, we can continue to lay progress and create an American community at peace with ourselves. The next generation will help us get there. When I was growing up as a child in Alabama, I saw signs all around me–I saw crosses that the Klan had put up, an announcement about a Klan meeting. I saw signs that said White, colored, white men, colored men, white women, colored women. There were places where we couldn’t go. But we brought those signs down. The only place you will see those signs today will be in a book, in a museum or on a video. When I was growing up, the great majority of African Americans could not participate in a democratic process in the South. They could not register to vote. But we changed that. When I first came to Washington to go on the freedom rides in 1961, black people and white people couldn’t be seated together on a Greyhound bus leaving this city. They travel to the South without being beaten, arrested and jailed. Now all across the South and all across America there are elected officials who are people of color. In the recent elections in Virginia and some other places around the country, you saw more people of color and more women getting elected to positions of power. They are African American, they’re Latino, Asian American, Native American. Our country is a much better place–a much different place–in spite of all the setbacks and interruptions of progress. I heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say on many occasions, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I still believe we will get there. We will redeem the soul of America, and in doing so we will inspire people around the world to stand up and speak out. I believe that it’s true today, and it was true when Dr. King said it years ago. I tell friends and family, colleagues and especially young people that when you see something that’s not right or fair, you have to do something, you have to speak up, you have to get in the way. When I was growing up, my mother and father and grandparents would tell me, “Don’t get in trouble. This is the way it is.” But then I heard Dr. King speak when I was 15\. To hear him preach, to be in a discussion with him sitting on the floor, or in a car, or at a meeting in a restaurant or a church, or just walking together … He instilled something within us. I never in my years around him saw him down. Never saw him hostile or mean to a single person. Dr. King and others inspired me to get in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. And I think we’re going to have generations for years to come that will be prepared to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. And lead us to higher heights. It’s a struggle that doesn’t last one day, one week, one month, one year. It is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe many lifetimes. The next generation will help make this society less conscious of race. There will be less racism, there will be more tolerance. Dr. King said we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters. There was a man by the name of A. Philip Randolph, from Jackson-ville, Fla., who moved to New York City and became a champion of civil rights, human rights and labor rights. At the March on Washington in 1963 he said, “Remember our mothers and our fore-fathers all came to this great land in different ships. But we’re all in the same boat now.” That is true today. You have to be hopeful. You have to be optimistic. If not, you will get lost in despair. When I travel around the country, I say, “Don’t get down–you cannot get down.” I’m not down. I got arrested, beaten, left bloody and unconscious. But I haven’t given up. And you cannot give up. _Lewis is a civil rights leader and Congressman from Georgia_ ## Transcript With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. That line from Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech is the one on which the design concept for his new memorial in Washington DC is based. As a work of art, the stiffly modeled sculpture of King at it's center has it's problems. But as a work of visual rhetoric with the vice for summoning feelings about one of the greatest americans, the first monument on the national mall devoted to a man who was never president and the first for an African American, it's a lot of things right. Eleven years ago the San Francisco based Roma Design Group won the design competition for the commission for the four acre memorial. Roma divided the Mountain of Despair into two 30 foot high masses of carved granite that face one another across a divide. Walk between those and you will emerge onto a plaza on the edge of the plaza basin. There you find the stone of hope, which appears to have shot forward from the center of the mountain to prevent a 30 foot figure of King emerging from the rough granite. Before it is a 450 foot long wall inscribed with quotations from King's sermons, writing and speeches Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty the mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. Though it's true the King memorial rest upon a kind of little minded embodiment of quotation. And succeeds all the same in calling up feelings of anguish and elation, doubt and fulfillment, in a setting where visitors can sit and reflect on King's life. And the statue? It came as a surprise when the foundation that raised funds for the memorial chose a sculptor based in China. The artist, [ UNKNOWN ], had a resume that included monumental figures of now. And in 2008, the US Commission of Fine Arts, which reviews plans for monuments in Washington, criticized early versions of his King statue. For its colossal scale and social realist style. [ UNKNOWN ] changes, but even now the stonework, which is not exactly supple, bears a whiff of officialdom. But in truth any large statue is going to cause hand wringing because democracies are never entirely comfortable with monumental sculpture. We like to think of ourselves as ordinary folk even when we produce people as extraordinary as King. Though at the commission's request, Lei also softened King's features to make him appear less, quote, confrontational. He still confronts us, but that seems just right. In life, King was a man of peace. In death, he forces us to remember that the struggle for justice he devoted himself to is in our hands now. 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