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John Lewis

1940–2020 · 80 years Tier I

He practiced his preaching on his family's chickens

Portrait of John Lewis — United States House of Representatives — 2006 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

There were ten children on the sharecrop outside Troy, in Pike County, Alabama, and the third of them meant to be a preacher. At five he practiced on the chickens. Troy State would not admit him, so he wrote to Martin Luther King Jr., who took an interest and called him the boy from Troy — Lewis was 18 when the two of them met. He went to the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, took a second degree in religion and philosophy at Fisk, and sat in the nonviolence workshops that James Lawson and Kelly Miller Smith ran at Clark Memorial Methodist Church. He held to that discipline for the next 60 years, which is the whole story in miniature.

The Nashville sit-ins he helped organize in 1960 desegregated the downtown lunch counters. In 1961 he rode with the 13 original Freedom Riders, took a beating at Rock Hill, South Carolina, and was knocked unconscious with a wooden crate at the Greyhound station in Montgomery. SNCC elected him chairman in June 1963. He was the youngest of the Big Six at the March on Washington that August, where the organizers made him strike the passage saying the movement could not support Kennedy's civil rights bill. On March 7, 1965, he led more than 600 people onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma and troopers fractured his skull. He ran the Voter Education Project from 1970 to 1977 and added nearly four million people to the rolls.

SNCC removed him in May 1966 and handed the chairmanship to Stokely Carmichael. He was 26, had been arrested 24 times, carried a healed skull fracture, and the organization he had led had decided nonviolence was finished. Twenty years later came a second break, and that one was his doing. Julian Bond had been at SNCC with him and was a friend. In the 1986 Democratic primary for Georgia's fifth district Bond took 47 percent to his 35, and Lewis won the runoff 52 to 48 in a campaign that, by the account of people who lived through it, badly strained relations across Black Atlanta. He held the seat he won that way for 17 terms.

He announced stage four pancreatic cancer on December 29, 2019, made a last public appearance on June 7, 2020, at the Black Lives Matter mural near the White House, and died in Atlanta on July 17, the last of the Big Six. On July 26 his casket crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on a horse-drawn caisson. He lay in state at the Alabama capitol and then in the Capitol Rotunda, the first Black lawmaker ever accorded that, before Barack Obama eulogized him at Ebenezer and he was buried at South-View Cemetery. The voting rights bill that carries his name has been reintroduced in every Congress since and has not become law.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

John Lewis's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement book
Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award 1998
National Museum of African American History and Culture Act law
He introduced the bill every year for 15 years before it passed 2003
March: Book One book
With Andrew Aydin and the illustrator Nate Powell 2013
March: Book Three book
National Book Award for Young People's Literature 2016
House floor sit-in for gun legislation other
He and Katherine Clark held the chamber for nearly 26 hours 2016

Life in brief

with age at each point

1945 aged ~5 Preaches to his family's chickens at five
1958 aged ~18 Meets Martin Luther King Jr., who calls him the boy from Troy He had written to King after Troy State refused his application.
1960 aged ~20 Helps organize the Nashville sit-ins They desegregated the downtown lunch counters.
1961 aged ~21 Rides with the original Freedom Riders and is beaten twice At Rock Hill, South Carolina, and again at the Montgomery Greyhound station.
August 28, 1963 aged 23 Speaks at the March on Washington at 23 Organizers made him cut the line saying the movement could not support Kennedy's bill.
March 7, 1965 aged 25 Troopers fracture his skull on the Edmund Pettus Bridge He was leading more than 600 marchers out of Selma.
May 1966 aged 26 SNCC replaces him with Stokely Carmichael
1986 aged ~46 Beats Julian Bond in a runoff for Georgia's fifth district Bond had led the primary 47 to 35. Lewis won the runoff 52 to 48.
July 17, 2020 aged 80 Dies in Atlanta at 80, the last of the Big Six