Source: Ebenezer Baptist Church / Church Pictorial Directory
Behind Every Movement: Throughout Women’s History Month, we will be examining the women behind prominent male historical figures and the essential roles that they played.
Lillian Miles Lewis was born Lillian Miles in Los Angeles, California in 1939. She was an educator, political adviser, and wife of late congressman John Lewis. As a child, her father owned a small contracting business, according to AJC. She attended high school with Johnny Cochran and went on to receive an undergraduate degree in English from California State College. She also earned a master’s degree in library science from the University of Southern California.
In 1960, she taught in Nigeria by way of a study abroad program. She later returned as a member of the Peace Corps and taught for two more years. Upon her return, she accepted a librarian position at Atlanta University.
While working in Atlanta, Miles and John Lewis were formally introduced at a New Year’s Eve party in 1967. They were introduced by Civil Rights activist Xernona Clayton and the rest is history. Clayton met the would-be congressman while working with Dr. Martin Luther King. She had also met Miles around that same time. Knowing that Miles was single, Clayton decided to play matchmaker because she wanted to hook her up with a “good man.”
“I wanted her to have someone who really would appreciate her skills and her talent,” Clayton shared while speaking at Rep. Lewis’ 2020 funeral, according to CBS. “So, I looked around and decided that I liked John.”
After one failed attempt to forge a love connection between the would-be couple while Lewis was in the hospital, Clayton invited them to a New Year’s Eve party. When they got arrived, they were both surprised to learn that they were the only attendees. From there, the couple began to date and two years later, they wed at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. The couple welcomed one child, John-Miles Lewis.
Years later, Miles shared that she felt as though she had known Lewis before she’d even met him.
“I was attracted to him before I knew him,” Lewis once said. “Every day and every night on the news was something about what was happening in the civil rights movement, so I felt like I knew him.”
Although Lewis had already made a name for himself as a civil rights activist when he and Miles met, the Los Angeles native played an essential role in helping him to transition from activism to politics. In 1972, Miles served as a delegate in support of Shirley Chisolm at the Democratic National Convention. In his memoir, Walking With The Wind, Lewis explained that it was Miles who encouraged him to run for congress in 1977. Although he lost the election to Wyche Fowler, Fowler appointed him as chief advisor.
“She had always been very involved in politics, much more than I,” Lewis wrote. “She was outgoing, involved, intelligent, and great in front of an audience — she could make a speech. She also knew how to organize, how to chair a meeting, the nitty-gritty stuff. When she finally said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go for it,’ that was enough. We were in.”
Miles continued to play a major role in Lewis’s career. He went on to win a seat on the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and was elected to Congress in 1991.
After 44 years of marriage, Miles departed Lewis’s life similarly to how she entered: on New Year’s Eve. On December 31, 2012, Lilian Miles Lewis died at Emory University Hospital. She had been ill for an extended period of time, but even through her sickness, she supported her husband.
“She’d kind of get on him about telling people she was sick,” Clayton said of her friend. “She didn’t want that to be the focus. She wanted him to do his work.”
She was 73 years old.
