Rep. John Lewis, who 'risked his life and his blood' as a giant of the civil rights movement, dies of cancer at 80
He was not on the list.
Rep. John R. Lewis, the civil rights icon whose fight for racial justice began in the Jim Crow south and ended in the halls of Congress, died Friday night.
The Georgia lawmaker had been suffering from Stage IV pancreatic cancer since December. He was 80.
The son of Alabama sharecroppers, Lewis served in Congress for more than three decades, pushing the causes he championed as an original Freedom Rider challenging segregation, discrimination and injustice in the Deep South – issues reverberating today in the Black Lives Matter movement.
Along with Martin Luther King Jr., he was an organizer of the March on Washington in 1963, a seminal moment in the Civil Rights Movement that led to the passage of voting rights for Blacks two years later.
He became a community activist and member of the Atlanta City Council before winning a seat in Congress in 1986. He would go on to become a best-selling author and in 2011 was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president. Lewis was elected to his 17th term in November 2018.
"(A)ll these years later, he is known as the Conscience of the United States Congress, still speaking his mind on issues of justice and equality," Obama said in 2011, as he was bestowing the Medal of Freedom. "And generations from now, when parents teach their children what is meant by courage, the story of John Lewis will come to mind – an American who knew that change could not wait for some other person or some other time; whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now."
Obama said Saturday he hugged Lewis at his inauguration in 2009 and "told him I was only there because of the sacrifices he made."
Lewis "loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise," Obama wrote.
Apart from the Freedom Riders, a group of black and white civil rights activists who rode interstate buses to fight segregation across the South, Lewis was one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which advocated for civil rights with demonstrations at lunch counters and voter-registration drives.
After four African American college students sat down on Feb. 1, 1960, at a whites-only lunch counter at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, Lewis helped organize similar sit-ins around the South that drew national attention to the rampant racism that pervaded southern states.
Lewis was arrested for the first time at a sit-in in Nashville on February 27, 1960.
"If it hadn't been for Nashville, I would not be the person I am now," Lewis told the Nashville Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network, in 2013. "We grew up sitting down or sitting in. And we grew up very fast."
"Some people were heard to say by sitting down these young people are standing up for the very best in American tradition," Lewis told USA TODAY in 2013.
"Martin Luther King Jr. was so pleased. He was gratified, He was deeply moved and touched to see this new militancy on the part of the students," the congressman continued. "He knew then that his message of non-violence and passive resistance would live, and it would be moving around the South, embedded in the very being of these young people."
Arrested, jailed and beaten for challenging Jim Crow laws, Lewis would become a national figure by his early 20s. He later became the youngest of the Big Six civil rights leaders and, at 23, helped organize the March on Washington. There, he provided a keynote speech at the landmark event for civil rights.
"As it stands now, the voting section of this bill will not help the thousands of black people who want to vote," Lewis said. "It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia who are qualified to vote but lack a sixth-grade education. One man, one vote is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours."
Two years later, he helped organize the voting-rights march in Alabama that became known as "Bloody Sunday," when state troopers attacked demonstrators with tear gas and billie clubs, a nationally televised melee hastened passage of the Voting Rights Act. Lewis' skull was fractured in the demonstration
Lewis remained the last surviving member of the Big Six, which included King, James Farmer, A. Phillip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young.
The Georgia lawmaker had been suffering from Stage IV pancreatic cancer since December. He was 80.
The son of Alabama sharecroppers, Lewis served in Congress for more than three decades, pushing the causes he championed as an original Freedom Rider challenging segregation, discrimination and injustice in the Deep South – issues reverberating today in the Black Lives Matter movement.
Along with Martin Luther King Jr., he was an organizer of the March on Washington in 1963, a seminal moment in the Civil Rights Movement that led to the passage of voting rights for Blacks two years later.
He became a community activist and member of the Atlanta City Council before winning a seat in Congress in 1986. He would go on to become a best-selling author and in 2011 was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president. Lewis was elected to his 17th term in November 2018.
"(A)ll these years later, he is known as the Conscience of the United States Congress, still speaking his mind on issues of justice and equality," Obama said in 2011, as he was bestowing the Medal of Freedom. "And generations from now, when parents teach their children what is meant by courage, the story of John Lewis will come to mind – an American who knew that change could not wait for some other person or some other time; whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now."
Obama said Saturday he hugged Lewis at his inauguration in 2009 and "told him I was only there because of the sacrifices he made."
Lewis "loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise," Obama wrote.
Apart from the Freedom Riders, a group of black and white civil rights activists who rode interstate buses to fight segregation across the South, Lewis was one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which advocated for civil rights with demonstrations at lunch counters and voter-registration drives.
After four African American college students sat down on Feb. 1, 1960, at a whites-only lunch counter at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, Lewis helped organize similar sit-ins around the South that drew national attention to the rampant racism that pervaded southern states.
Lewis was arrested for the first time at a sit-in in Nashville on February 27, 1960.
"If it hadn't been for Nashville, I would not be the person I am now," Lewis told the Nashville Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network, in 2013. "We grew up sitting down or sitting in. And we grew up very fast."
"Some people were heard to say by sitting down these young people are standing up for the very best in American tradition," Lewis told USA TODAY in 2013.
"Martin Luther King Jr. was so pleased. He was gratified, He was deeply moved and touched to see this new militancy on the part of the students," the congressman continued. "He knew then that his message of non-violence and passive resistance would live, and it would be moving around the South, embedded in the very being of these young people."
Arrested, jailed and beaten for challenging Jim Crow laws, Lewis would become a national figure by his early 20s. He later became the youngest of the Big Six civil rights leaders and, at 23, helped organize the March on Washington. There, he provided a keynote speech at the landmark event for civil rights.
"As it stands now, the voting section of this bill will not help the thousands of black people who want to vote," Lewis said. "It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia who are qualified to vote but lack a sixth-grade education. One man, one vote is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours."
Two years later, he helped organize the voting-rights march in Alabama that became known as "Bloody Sunday," when state troopers attacked demonstrators with tear gas and billie clubs, a nationally televised melee hastened passage of the Voting Rights Act. Lewis' skull was fractured in the demonstration
Lewis remained the last surviving member of the Big Six, which included King, James Farmer, A. Phillip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young.
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