Congressman John Lewis and the white man who beat him bloody during a civil rights protest in 1961, came together to accept the Common Ground award Thursday night. “The Common Ground Awards are presented annually to honor outstanding accomplishments in conflict resolution, negotiation, community building, and peacebuilding. Recipients have made significant contributions toward bridging divides between people, finding solutions to seemingly intractable problems, and providing inspiration, and hope where often there was none.”

The reconciliation journeys of Rep. John Lewis and Elwin Wilson embody the best of these principles.

According to AP:

Elwin Wilson was an unabashed racist, the sort who once hung a black doll from a noose outside his home. John Lewis was a young civil rights leader bent on changing laws, if not hearts and minds, even if it cost him his life.

They faced each other at a South Carolina bus station during a protest in 1961. Wilson joined a white gang that jeered Lewis, attacked him and left him bloodied on the ground.

Forty-eight years later, the men met again — this time so Wilson could apologize to Lewis and express regret for his hatred. Lewis, now a congressman from Atlanta, greeted his former tormentor at his Capitol Hill office.

“I just told him that I was sorry,” Wilson, 72, said in a telephone interview Wednesday as he traveled home to Rock Hill, S.C. For years, he said, he tried to block the incident out of his mind “and couldn’t do it.”

Lewis said Wilson is the first person involved in the dozens of attacks against him during the civil rights era to step forward and apologize. When they met Tuesday, Lewis offered forgiveness without hesitation.

“I was very moved,” said Lewis. “He was very, very sincere, and I think it takes a lot of raw courage to be willing to come forward the way he did. … I think it will lead to a great deal of healing.”

Wilson said he had felt an urge to voice his remorse for years. He talked about his past activities a few weeks ago with a friend, and the friend asked him where he thought he might go if he died.

“I said probably hell,” Wilson said. “He said, ‘Well, you don’t have to.’” Source: Segregationist who beat John Lewis asks forgiveness

Those who are locked in racial hatred are as imprisoned as those they work to subjugate. I always say whether you are the jailer or the jailed, you are still in prison.