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John Lewis, Icon of Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 80

Representative John Lewis, the sharecroppers’ son who became a giant of the civil rights movement, died Friday after a monthslong battle with cancer, his family said. He was 80.

His death was confirmed in a statement by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Lewis, of Georgia, announced on Dec. 29 that he had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and vowed to fight it with the same passion with which he had battled racial injustice. “I have been in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life,” he said.

On the front lines of the bloody campaign to end Jim Crow laws, with blows to his body and a fractured skull to prove it, Lewis was a valiant stalwart of the civil rights movement and the last surviving speaker at the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

More than a half-century later, after the killing in May of George Floyd, a Black man in police custody in Minneapolis, Lewis welcomed the resulting global demonstrations against police killings of Black people and, more broadly, against systemic racism in many corners of society. He saw those protests as a continuation of his life’s work, though his illness had left him to watch from the sidelines.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., described Lewis as “one of the greatest heroes of American history.”

“John Lewis was a titan of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and bravery transformed our nation — from the determination with which he met discrimination at lunch counters and on Freedom Rides, to the courage he showed as a young man facing down violence and death on Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the moral leadership he brought to the Congress for more than 30 years,” the speaker said in a statement.

Lewis announced in late December that he was undergoing treatment for stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

“I have been in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now,” he said in a statement at the time.

“He was honored and respected as the conscience of the U.S. Congress and an icon of American history, but we knew him as a loving father and brother,” his family said in a statement Friday night.

“He was a stalwart champion in the ongoing struggle to demand respect for the dignity and worth of every human being. He dedicated his entire life to nonviolent activism and was an outspoken advocate in the struggle for equal justice in America. He will be deeply missed.”

Lewis had served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1987, where he was sometimes referred to as the “conscience of Congress.” He often voted and spoke out against U.S. military interventions, including the Iraq War.

His activism continued even as he was battling the cancer that claimed his life. Lewis issued a statement on Jan. 5 slamming the drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

“I want to be clear in my unequivocal condemnation of yesterday’s unauthorized military strike,” he said. “Many times, I warned that war is bloody, costly, and destroys the hopes and dreams of a generation. Failure to learn from the lessons of history means that we are doomed to repeat mistakes of the past.”

He also returned to the bridge in Selma on March 1 for the 55th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and urged marchers ahead of the Alabama primary to “keep the faith. Keep our eyes on the prize. We must go out and vote like we have never voted before.”

“Help redeem the soul of America,” he said.

Lewis died on the same day as did another stalwart of the civil rights movement, the Rev. C.T. Vivian, a close associate of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Copyright 2020 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.

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