ATLANTA (AP) — John Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement whose bloody beating by Alabama state
troopers in 1965 helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, and who went on to a long and
celebrated career in Congress, has died. He was 80.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed Lewis’ passing late Friday night, calling him "one of the
greatest heroes of American history."
"All of us were humbled to call Congressman Lewis a colleague, and are heartbroken by his
passing," Pelosi said. "May his memory be an inspiration that moves us all to, in the face of
injustice, make ‘good trouble, necessary trouble.’"
The condolences for Lewis were bipartisan. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Lewis was "a
pioneering civil rights leader who put his life on the line to fight racism, promote equal rights, and
bring our nation into greater alignment with its founding principles. "
Lewis’s announcement in late December 2019 that he had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer —
"I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now," he said — inspired tributes from
both sides of the aisle, and an unstated accord that the likely passing of this Atlanta Democrat would
represent the end of an era.
The announcement of his death came just hours after the passing of the Rev. C.T. Vivian, another civil
rights leader who died early Friday at 95.
Lewis was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. that had the greatest impact on the movement. He was best known for leading some
600 protesters in the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
At age 25 — walking at the head of the march with his hands tucked in the pockets of his tan overcoat —
Lewis was knocked to the ground and beaten by police. His skull was fractured, and nationally televised
images of the brutality forced the country’s attention on racial oppression in the South.
Within days, King led more marches in the state, and President Lyndon Johnson soon was pressing Congress
to pass the Voting Rights Act. The bill became law later that year, removing barriers that had barred
Blacks from voting.
"He loved this country so much that he risked his life and its blood so that it might live up to its
promise," President Barack Obama said after Lewis’ death. "Early on, he embraced the
principles of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience as the means to bring about real change in
this country."
Lewis joined King and four other civil rights leaders in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. He
spoke to the vast crowd just before King delivered his epochal "I Have a Dream" speech.
A 23-year-old firebrand, Lewis toned down his intended remarks at the insistence of others, dropping a
reference to a "scorched earth" march through the South and scaling back criticisms of
President John Kennedy. It was a potent speech nonetheless, in which he vowed: "By the forces of
our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand
pieces and put them together in an image of God and democracy."
It was almost immediately, and forever, overshadowed by the words of King, the man who had inspired him
to activism.
Lewis was born on Feb. 21, 1940, outside the town of Troy, in Pike County, Alabama. He grew up on his
family’s farm and attended segregated public schools.
As a boy, he wanted to be a minister, and practiced his oratory on the family chickens. Denied a library
card because of the color of his skin, he became an avid reader, and could cite obscure historical dates
and details even in his later years. He was a teenager when he first heard King preaching on the radio.
They met when Lewis was seeking support to become the first Black student at Alabama’s segregated Troy
State University.
He ultimately attended the American Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University in Nashville,
Tennessee. He began organizing sit-in demonstrations at whites-only lunch counters and volunteering as a
Freedom Rider, enduring beatings and arrests while traveling around the South to challenge segregation.
Lewis helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was named its chairman in 1963,
making him one of the Big Six at a tender age. The others, in addition to King, were Whitney Young of
the National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph of the Negro American Labor Council; James L. Farmer Jr.,
of the Congress of Racial Equality; and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP. All six met at the Roosevelt Hotel in
New York to plan and announce the March on Washington.
The huge demonstration galvanized the movement, but success didn’t come quickly. After extensive training
in nonviolent protest, Lewis and the Rev. Hosea Williams led demonstrators on a planned march of more
than 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama’s capital, on March 7, 1965. A phalanx
of police blocked their exit from the Selma bridge.
Authorities shoved, then swung their truncheons, fired tear gas and charged on horseback, sending many to
the hospital and horrifying much of the nation. King returned with thousands, completing the march to
Montgomery before the end of the month.
Lewis turned to politics in 1981, when he was elected to the Atlanta City Council.
He won his seat in Congress in 1986 and spent much of his career in the minority. After Democrats won
control of the House in 2006, Lewis became his party’s senior deputy whip, a behind-the-scenes
leadership post in which he helped keep the party unified.
In an early setback for Barack Obama’s 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Lewis endorsed Hillary Rodham
Clinton for the nomination. Lewis switched when it became clear Obama had overwhelming Black support.
Obama later honored Lewis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and they marched hand in hand in Selma
on the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday attack.
President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday praised Lewis as a
"giant" who became "the conscience of the nation."
Lewis also worked for 15 years to gain approval for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American
History and Culture. Humble and unfailingly friendly, Lewis was revered on Capitol Hill — but as one of
the most liberal members of Congress, he often lost policy battles, from his effort to stop the Iraq War
to his defense of young immigrants.
He met bipartisan success in Congress in 2006 when he led efforts to renew the Voting Rights Act, but the
Supreme Court later invalidated much of the law, and it became once again what it was in his youth, a
work in progress. Later, when the presidency of Donald Trump challenged his civil rights legacy, Lewis
made no effort to hide his pain.
Lewis refused to attend Trump’s inauguration, saying he didn’t consider him a "legitimate
president" because Russians had conspired to get him elected. When Trump later complained about
immigrants from "s—hole countries," Lewis declared, "I think he is a racist … we have
to try to stand up and speak up and not try to sweep it under the rug."
Lewis said he’d been arrested 40 times in the 1960s, five more as a congressman. At 78, he told a rally
he’d do it again to help reunite immigrant families separated by the Trump administration.
"There cannot be any peace in America until these young children are returned to their parents and
set all of our people free," Lewis said in June, recalling the "good trouble" he got into
protesting segregation as a young man.
"If we fail to do it, history will not be kind to us," he shouted. "I will go to the
border. I’ll get arrested again. If necessary, I’m prepared to go to jail."
In a speech the day of the House impeachment vote of Trump, Lewis explained the importance of that vote.
"When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say
something, to do something. Our children and their children will ask us ‘what did you do? what did you
say?" While the vote would be hard for some, he said: "We have a mission and a mandate to be
on the right side of history."
Lewis’ wife of four decades, Lillian Miles, died in 2012. They had one son, John Miles Lewis.
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Woodward reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Michael Warren contributed to this report.
