Lewis, John Robert

Impact on the world

Elected to Congress in 1986 representing Georgia's 5th District after defeating fellow civil rights leader and longtime friend Julian Bond, Lewis served 17 terms over more than three decades, becoming known across party lines as 'the conscience of the Congress' for carrying the moral authority of the civil rights movement directly into the legislature; he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2011.

Life & background

Born to Alabama sharecroppers in a household of ten children with no electricity or running water, Lewis became the first in his family to earn a college degree, studying religion and philosophy at Fisk University while training in nonviolent resistance under Reverend James Lawson in Nashville. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he co-organized the 1961 Freedom Rides, was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, and led the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, where he was beaten and had his skull fractured by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an event known as 'Bloody Sunday,' which directly spurred passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After an unsuccessful 1977 congressional bid and a term on the Atlanta City Council, Lewis won election to Congress in 1986, defeating his former SNCC colleague and friend Julian Bond in a bitter primary that permanently damaged their friendship. He served until his death in 2020, becoming only the second African American to represent Georgia in Congress since Reconstruction, was arrested more than 40 times across his life including five times as a sitting congressman protesting causes from apartheid to genocide in Darfur, and authored the bestselling graphic novel trilogy 'March,' which won the National Book Award.

Sources

1. NPR; Harvard Gazette; National Archives; Encyclopedia of Alabama; Roll Call