Rep. John Lewis died Friday after a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer. The civil rights icon was eighty years old.
He was elected to Congress in November 1986 and served as US Representative from Georgia’s Fifth District for seventeen terms. He was awarded more than fifty honorary degrees and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2011.
The son of sharecroppers, he spent Sundays growing up with a great-grandfather who was born into slavery. When Lewis was a few months old, the manager of a chicken farm named Jesse Thornton was lynched about twenty miles down the road. His offense: he referred to a police officer by his first name rather than as “Mister.” A mob pursued Thornton, stoned and shot him, then dumped his body in a swamp.
As a boy, Lewis decided that he wanted to be a preacher. He earned a BA in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University and graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville.
However, when he was fifteen years old, he heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preach on the radio and felt that God was calling him to join the civil rights movement.
Beaten, spat upon, and burned with cigarettes
According to the New York Times, Lewis “led demonstrations against racially segregated restrooms, hotels, restaurants, public parks, and swimming pools, and he rose up against other indignities of second-class citizenship. At nearly every turn, he was beaten, spat upon, or burned with cigarettes. He was tormented by white mobs and absorbed body blows from law enforcement.”
During the Freedom Rides of 1961, the Times reports that Lewis “was left unconscious in a pool of his own blood outside the Greyhound Bus Terminal in…
… Read More
—
Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Denison Forum.