John Lewis, an icon of the civil rights movement and a 17-term US Representative from Georgia, has died, according to multiple media reports. He was 80.
He announced in December that he was fighting pancreatic cancer.
Awful, awful news: Civil Rights Icon Rep John Lewis has died.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) July 18, 2020
Lewis was an integral figure alongside Martin Luther King, Jr in the fight for desegregation, voting rights, and equality in the 1960s. He was one of the original Freedom Riders in 1961, taking public transportation with six other Black and six white people to demonstrate for integrated transportation. In 1963, he was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and one of the key organizers of the March on Washington, where King gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. He was 23 at the time, the youngest person to speak that day. He was the last living speaker.
He was arrested multiple times for acts of civil disobedience such as using a whites-only restroom.
Lewis ran for Atlanta City Council in 1981, winning with 69 percent of the vote, and served until 1986, when he won a seat in the US House of Representatives to represent Georgia’s Fifth District.
