**This piece was updated to include Jonathan Capehart’s new article.
The fury that has followed John Lewis’ press conference endorsing Hillary Clinton and repudiating Bernie Sanders has taken a few very dirty twists and turns.
John Lewis said he hadn’t met Bernie Sanders during the 60’s. What ensued from there was an onslaught of articles purporting to prove that Sanders’ picture, featured in the University of Chicago Law School magazine, erroneously listed Sanders as being present at a CORE sit-in. Lewis has since issued a statement clarifying his original comments on Sanders.
I wrote about that here and, based on a piece by Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post, updated my piece to reflect the information he presented. It now turns out that the information was FALSE and the picture indeed is of Bernie Sanders.
How do we know? The photographer, Danny Lyon, has come forward with a statement condemning Time Magazine for saying Sanders is not pictured in the photo he took:
“In 1962 and the spring of 1963 I was the student photographer at the University of Chicago, making pictures for the yearbook, the Alumni Magazine and the student paper, The Maroon. By the summer of 1962 I had taken my camera into the deep South, and become the first photographer for SNCC.
“That winter at the University of Chicago, there was a sit-in inside the administration building protesting discrimination against blacks in university owned housing. I went to it with a CORE activist and friend. The sit in was in a crowded hallway, blocking the entrance to the office of Dr. George Beadle, the chancellor.
“I took the photograph of Bernie Sanders speaking to his fellow CORE members at that sit-in. Bob McNamara, a close friend and CORE activist, is in the very corner next to me in the picture. Across the room from me is another campus photographer named Wexler, who taught me how to develop film.
“I photographed Bernie a second time after he got a haircut, as he appeared next to the Nobel laureate and chancellor Dr. George Beadle. Time Magazine is now claiming it is not Bernie in the picture but someone else. It is Bernie, and it is proof of his very early dedication to justice for African Americans. The CORE sit-in that Bernie helped lead was the first civil rights sit-in to take place in the North.”
To his great credit and impeccable honesty, Jonathan Capehart is following up after having written his piece and made these two announcements via Twitter:
Quite the crazy day. I've intrvu'd ex-wife of Bruce Rappaport AND the photographer of the disputed "Sanders" photo. Now transcribing.
— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) February 12, 2016
and
Spent the day doing my job. Reporting. Getting the facts. Thinking before writing. New Bernie photo piece coming soon. Not so cut and dry.
— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) February 13, 2016
He could have let it go, as many now do in the media, and not written another word, leaving readers with a wrong impression. His resultant piece, following interviews he conducted, can be read here.
Meanwhile, Sanders spokesperson, Jeff Weaver, spoke to CNN and confirmed the pictures are of Sanders in 1962:
“That is, in fact, Bernie Sanders in those photos,” Weaver said. “We’re 100% confident.”
Before I post all of the photos I’ve gathered, I would like to say this. It takes one heck of a classy guy to be smeared, continuously, as Sanders has been for months by the unseen hand of the Clinton machine, and keep taking the high road. Clinton did learn one thing from 2008, and it is not to make another 3:00 AM video (included below the fold.)
What Hillary Clinton hasn’t yet learned, however, is that she should not expect to continue to be able to smear people through sources and not have it keep blowing up in her face, as it has, every single time she and her husband have done it. It didn’t work when she did it to Barack Obama, and it won’t work as she does it to Sanders. As it is, the credit for starting what we now all know as “Birtherism,” is all Hillary and Bill Clinton’s from that one awful video.
Bernie Sanders said he wouldn’t run a negative campaign and he has kept his promise, even though, by now, he has every right to.
What, if anything, does this change about what I wrote in my “Sister Souljah” piece? Nothing, except for the obvious change in factual information. John Lewis is still a human being who is a national hero and a politician.
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