By Sam Skardon, republished with permission  |  Not many people can say this, but in my first job, I proudly kept a copy of my boss’ mugshot on my desk. I’d look at it and wonder if the 21-year-old John Lewis in the picture, who had just been arrested on the Freedom Rides, thought it was possible that someday a framed version of it would be sitting on the desk of a 21-year-old aide in his office at the U.S. Capitol. He had a slight smile on his face in the picture, so maybe he had a hunch. I asked him about it once and he just flashed the same smirk from the mugshot back at me.

I wish I had counted the number of times I heard Mr. Lewis tell his life story. His voice would roar to life with that deep Alabama accent. He was a preacher and every audience quickly became his congregation. He had been doing it his whole life, as the crowd would quickly learn.

Growing up on a farm in Alabama, his job was to raise chickens. They were his first parishioners. …