Remembering John Lewis

John Lewis, longtime Georgia congressman and American civil rights legend, died on Friday at the age of 80.  

Lewis announced last December that he had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. “I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now,” Lewis said, which is saying something because Lewis had been fighting for justice his entire life.

In 1965, Lewis led the famous march of 600 protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, to demand voting rights. Lewis’s skull was fractured by police in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday. He was 25 at the time.

• Lewis was the last surviving speaker of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
• In 2011, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.

John Lewis: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something, to say something, and not be quiet.”