Shop Til You Drop

Rep. John Lewis, who 'risked his life and his blood' as a giant of the civil rights movement, dies of cancer at 80

WASHINGTON – 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.
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., poses in his office in the Cannon Building in Washington, DC on July 20, 2012. Lewis, a former Freedom Rider and the last surviving major organizer of the March on Washington.Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., poses in his office in the Cannon Building in Washington, DC on July 20, 2012. Lewis, a former Freedom Rider and the last surviving major organizer of the March on Washington.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 that 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.

Comments

Shop and Save

Kindle ire HDX 8.9 $329

Popular posts from this blog

Rapper Scams $1.2M in COVID-19 Relief, Gloats with ‘EDD’ Video

Black Panther' star Chadwick Boseman dies after battle with cancer

THIS IS MAMBA MENTALITY