One of the last times I spoke with George Arthur at length was in July, in a phone conversation. Rep. John Lewis, the legendary champion of American civil rights, had just died in Georgia. Arthur remembered Lewis from some conversations when they served years ago on their respective city councils in Buffalo and Atlanta, and they happened to end up at the same conference.
As usual, to say Arthur simply âknewâ Lewis did not come close enough. They bonded over Buffalo, a city where Lewis made a pivotal childhood visit 70 years ago to stay with relatives who moved away from harsh legal segregation in the South. Lewis told Arthur the Buffalo street on which those cousins lived in the 1950s, and as we talked, Arthur could not quite remember which one it was.