Because Of You John Lewis A Civil Rights Icon

John Robert Lewis was an American statesman and civil rights leader who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020.

Lewis started his journey early in life as he marched under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King. A follower and colleague of Martin Luther King Jr. he participated in lunch counter sit-ins, joined the Freedom Riders in 1961 challenging segregated buses. The Freedom Riders were seven blacks and six whites who were determined to ride from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans in an integrated fashion despite the several southern states who had enforced laws prohibiting black and white riders from sitting next to each other on public transportation. The Freedom Ride was initiated to pressure the federal government to enforce the Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia (1960) that declared segregated interstate bus travel to be unconstitutional. The Freedom Rides also exposed the government's passivity towards violence against law-abiding citizens. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but did nothing itself, except to have FBI agents take notes. The Kennedy Administration then called for a cooling-off period, with a moratorium on Freedom Rides.

In the South, Lewis and other nonviolent Freedom Riders were beaten by angry mobs and arrested. At age 21, Lewis was the first of the Freedom Riders to be assaulted while in Rock Hill, South Carolina. When he tried to enter a whites-only waiting room, two white men attacked him, injuring his face and kicking him in the ribs. Nevertheless, only two weeks later Lewis joined a Freedom Ride that was bound for Jackson, Mississippi. "We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal. We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back," Lewis stated about his perseverance following the act of violence. Lewis was also imprisoned for 40 days in the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Sunflower County after participating in a Freedom Riders activity.

In an interview with CNN during the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, Lewis recounted the amount of violence he and the 12 other original Freedom Riders endured. In Birmingham, the Riders were beaten with baseball bats, chains, lead pipes, and stones. They were arrested by police who led them across the border into Tennessee and let them go. They reorganized and rode to Montgomery, where they were met with more violence, and Lewis was hit in the head with a wooden crate. "It was very violent. I thought I was going to die. I was left lying at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery unconscious," said Lewis, remembering the incident. When CORE gave up on the Freedom Ride because of the violence, Lewis and fellow activist Diane Nash arranged for the Nashville students to take it over and bring it to a successful conclusion.

In February 2009, 48 years after he was bloodied in a Greyhound station during a Freedom Ride, Lewis received a nationally televised apology on Capitol Hill from a white southerner and former Klansman, Elwin Wilson., he was in his 70’s, with his son in his 40’s. ‘Mr. Lewis, I am one of the people who beat you and your seat mate’” on a bus. “He said, ‘I want to apologize. Will you accept my apology?’” After accepting his apology and hugging the father and son, the three cried together, Lewis remembered. “It is the power in the way of peace, the way of love,” Lewis said. “We must never, ever hate. The way of love is a better way.”

At a the age of 23 was a keynote speaker at the historic 1963 March on Washington. Lewis was one of the "Big Six" leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March

He is best known for surviving a brutal beating by police during one of the three landmark marches in 1965 in Selma, Alabama. At age 25, Lewis helped lead the landmark march of three for voting rights on the Edmund Pettus Bridge which became known as Bloody Sunday, where he and other marchers were met by heavily armed state and local police who attacked them with clubs, fracturing Lewis’ skull. Images from that “Bloody Sunday” shocked the nation and galvanized support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. “I gave a little blood on that bridge, I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death.” Lewis said years later.

Despite the attack and other beatings, Lewis never lost his activist spirit, taking it from protests to politics. He was elected to the Atlanta city council in 1981, then to Congress six years later to become a towering figure of the civil rights movement and a longtime US congressman. Due to his length of service, he became the dean of the Georgia congressional delegation.

Once in Washington, he focused on fighting against poverty and helping younger generations by improving education and health care. He also co-wrote a series of graphic novels about the civil rights movement, which won him a National Book Award.

In 1988, the year after he was sworn into Congress, Lewis introduced a bill to create a national African American museum in Washington. The bill failed, and for 15 years he continued to introduce it with each new Congress. Each time it was blocked in the Senate, most often by conservative Southern Senator Jesse Helms. In 2003, Helms retired. The bill won bipartisan support, and President George W. Bush signed the bill to establish the museum, with the Smithsonian's Board of Regents to establish the location. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, located adjacent to the Washington Memorial, held its opening ceremony on September 25, 2016

He was a leader of the Democratic Party in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 1991 as a Chief Deputy Whip and from 2003 as Senior Chief Deputy Whip. Lewis received many honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Lewis died after a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of 80. Lewis had vowed to fight the disease after announcing in late December 2019 that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, which was discovered as a result of a routine medical visit and subsequent testing.

“I have been in some kind of fight for freedom, equality, basic human rights for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now,” he stated in his announcement.

The death of the civil rights icon came as the nation is still grappling with racial upheaval in the wake of the death of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests that have swept the nation. Along with our long battle with Covid-19 and struggles to bring the virus under control.

“It is with inconsolable grief and enduring sadness that we announce the passing of U.S. Rep. John Lewis,” his family said in a statement. “He was honored and respected as the conscience of the US Congress and an icon of American history, but we knew him as a loving father and brother. He was a stalwart champion in the on-going struggle to demand respect for the dignity and worth of every human being. He dedicated his entire life to non-violent activism and was an outspoken advocate in the struggle for equal justice in America. He will be deeply missed.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced his death in a statement, “Today, America mourns the loss of one of the greatest heroes of American history: Congressman John Lewis, the Conscience of the Congress,” the California Democrat said.

Lewis, a Democrat who was widely seen as a moral conscience of Congress because of his decades-long embodiment of nonviolent fight for civil rights. His passionate oratory was backed by a long record of action that included, by his count, more than 40 arrests while demonstrating against racial and social injustice. He fulfilled many key roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States.

“Sometimes when I look back and think about it, how did we do what we did? How did we succeed? We didn’t have a website. We didn’t have a cellular telephone. But I felt when we were sitting in at those lunch counter stools, or going on the Freedom Ride, or marching from Selma to Montgomery, there was a power and a force. God Almighty was there with us.” Lewis said in reference to the civil rights movement.

He described attending President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration as an “out-of-body” experience. “When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought, I never dreamed of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected president of the United States,” stated Lewis.

In 2011, after more than 50 years on the front lines of the civil rights movement, Lewis received the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, placed round his neck by America’s first Black president.

Obama said in a statement following Lewis’ death that the civil rights icon will “continue, even in his passing, to serve as a beacon” in America’s journey towards a more perfect union. “He loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise. And through the decades, he not only gave all of himself to the cause of freedom and justice, but inspired generations that followed to try to live up to his example,” Obama said. “Because of you, John.” -Barack Obama

Obama paid tribute to his ‘hero’ John Lewis stating that ‘John’s life was exceptional’ as he delivered his eulogy.

116 Congress, 2nd Session Formerly the Office of Representative John Lewis an American civil rights leader and politician best known for his “good trouble” will always be remembered but never the same. Lewis always called on the younger generation to continue to work for justice and an end to hatred in America. “I’ve said to students, ‘When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something, to say something. And Dr. King inspired us to do just that.”

His activism was inspired by the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his anger of the unfairness of the Jim Crow South along with his personal effect of racism in America while in college, he launched what he called “good trouble” with organized protests and sit-ins. “I want to see young people in America feel the spirit of the 1960s and find a way to get in the way. To find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble. Young people can and should push for transformative change and hold us accountable to it.” I encourage everyone reading this to find a way to get into “good trouble.”