Following a battle with pancreatic cancer, American hero and civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) passed away yesterday at the age of 80.
For 60 of those years, Lewis was a leader in the struggle for civil rights and human rights in America:
Mr. Lewis’s personal history paralleled that of the civil rights movement. He was among the original 13 Freedom Riders, the Black and white activists who challenged segregated interstate travel in the South in 1961. He was a founder and early leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which coordinated lunch-counter sit-ins. He helped organize the March on Washington, where Dr. King was the main speaker, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Mr. Lewis led demonstrations against racially segregated restrooms, hotels, restaurants, public parks and swimming pools, and he rose up against other indignities of second-class citizenship. At nearly every turn he was beaten, spat upon or burned with cigarettes. He was tormented by white mobs and absorbed body blows from law enforcement.
On March 7, 1965, he led one of the most famous marches in American history. In the vanguard of 600 people demanding the voting rights they had been denied, Mr. Lewis marched partway across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., into a waiting phalanx of state troopers in riot gear.
Ordered to disperse, the protesters silently stood their ground. The troopers responded with tear gas and bullwhips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. In the melee, known as Bloody Sunday, a trooper cracked Mr. Lewis’s skull with a billy club, knocking him to the ground, then hit him again when he tried to get up.
That shameful episode in our history led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, since sabotaged by the Republican Supreme Court. Elected to Congress in 1987, Lewis brought the moral authority of his struggle for civil rights to bear in fights for affordable health care and gun control legislation.
It's possible to characterize a figure like John Lewis' as others have: "towering," "courageous," "passionate," "indomitable," "the conscience of the Congress." But a life so sweeping and meaningful can't really be distilled into a few paragraphs. Instead, this morning we can heed his words, which will resonate through the years, as simple a truth today as they will be 100 years from now:
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”Rest in peace, sir.
BONUS: Tributes to the life and legacy of Congressman Lewis here and here.
