Interviewer:
Could you see what the gains might have been?
John Lewis:
I think we had some idea. A great many of us thought that maybe just being able to go into a lunch counter and get a hamburger and a Coke, that would end certain forms of segregation, racial discrimination—being able to take a seat on a bus or in a waiting room. There were certain barriers physical barriers that we wanted to remove. I think that a great many of us thought that in a short period of time, maybe within a matter of a few months, certain things would happen in terms of removing some of the barriers, some of the legal barriers. But I don't think for the most part that in 1960 we see some of the changes that we see now.
Interviewer:
There were more political barriers than social barriers?
John Lewis:
There were physical barriers, removing some of the social barriers. And I guess in 1960 we had no idea that in many parts of the South people would be registering and voting and being elected to office.

- John Lewis, former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Georgia congressman

Interview with John Lewis by Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, November 20, 1973, Interview A-0073, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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