Breaking! Civil Rights leader John Lewis has died at 80 years old of cancer

by SooperMexican

It’s being reported that the civil rights leader and Democratic congressman John Lewis has passed away this evening.

Well, that’s very sad news. I’m sure the majority of our readers didn’t agree with his political policies in his latter years as a Democratic congressman, but I think we can all respect the man for being a leader in the Civil Rights movement. Here’s some of his remarkable life:

Lewis has been on the front lines of the fight for democracy for most of his life. Born on Feb. 21, 1940, to sharecroppers outside of Troy, Alabama, Lewis grew up attending segregated public schools. After watching the activism that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and hearing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words on the radio, Lewis was inspired to join the civil rights movement and fought for voting rights ever since.

As a college student attending Fisk University, Lewis helped organize peaceful sit-in protests at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. At age 21, he volunteered to be a Freedom Rider — one of the activists who risked their lives challenging segregation throughout the South by sitting in seats reserved for white people. (The protest was inspired by Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her bus seat for a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955.)

Lewis helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and became its chairman during the peak of the civil rights movement from 1963 to 1966. Lewis organized student activism in the movement through SNCC and was eventually considered one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement, alongside King.

At 23, Lewis was one of the organizers of and the youngest keynote speaker at the March on Washington in August 1963. He helped launch voter registration drives during the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, yet another example of his determination to bring voting rights to Black people.

Lewis often faced violent consequences for his civil rights leadership. He was repeatedly arrested and beaten by police and angry mobs for challenging Jim Crow segregation in the South and fighting for voting rights.

Alabama state troopers fractured Lewis’ skull in March 1965 while he led more than 600 peaceful demonstrators in a voting rights protest across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, during what became known as Bloody Sunday. Media coverage of the cruelty during Bloody Sunday ― and the subsequent successful Selma march in which Lewis walked alongside King ― helped usher in the passage of the Voting Rights Act that year.

I mean…

Rest in peace, congressman.

UPDATE: Trump has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff

I’m sure some will object to this, but it seems reasonable to me given his work in Civil Rights.


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