HONORING A PILLAR OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND THE HALLS OF CONGRESS
Rights activists, politicians from both parties and many other people touched by the legacy of John Lewis mourned the congressman and pillar of the civil rights movement Saturday, lauding the strength, courage and kindness of a man whose lifelong struggle against racial discrimination took him from a bridge in Selma to the nation’s Capitol.
Former President Barack Obama, America’s first Black president, recalled being sworn in for his first term: “I hugged him on the inauguration stand before I was sworn in and told him I was only there because of the sacrifices he made.”
Lewis died Friday, several months after the Georgia Democrat announced that he had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.
Lewis, 80, often recalled his upbringing in the segregated South, including how he was denied a library card because the library was for “whites only.” Determined to destroy segregation, Lewis was a 23-year-old firebrand, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, when he joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and four other civil rights leaders at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York to plan and announce the 1963 March on Washington. The others were Whitney Young of the National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph of the Negro American Labor Council; James L. Farmer Jr. of the interracial Congress of Racial Equality; and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP.
Lewis was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six activists who organized the march, and he spoke shortly before King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to a vast sea of people.
If that speech marked a turning point in the civil rights era — or at least the most famous moment — the struggle was far from over.
Two years later, Lewis helped lead the “Bloody Sunday” voting rights march, which was intended to go from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. But white police, state troopers and thugs blocked their way on the bridge out of Selma, attacking the peaceful marchers with clubs, bullwhips and tear gas. Lewis suffered a cracked skull.
He went on to make a career in politics, representing Atlanta in Congress for more than 30 years, all the while imploring people to press for justice — to make what he came to call “good trouble, necessary trouble.”
“As a young man marching for equality in Selma, Alabama, John answered brutal violence with courageous hope,” former President George W. Bush said. “And throughout his career as a civil rights leader and public servant, he worked to make our country a more perfect union.”
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms described Lewis’ call for ‘‘good trouble’’ as “a generational rallying cry for nonviolent activism in the pursuit of social justice and human rights.”
Lewis also scrapped with President Donald Trump, refusing to attend his inauguration and calling him a racist. Trump ordered flags flown at half-staff to honor Lewis — as required by law for sitting members of Congress. More than 14 hours after his death, following an array of unrelated retweets and a golf outing, he offered condolences.
“Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing,” Trump tweeted. “Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family.”
Those mourning included baseball legend Hank Aaron, who said he and Lewis “connected to the roots.”
“By that I mean we were born and grew up in the highly racist and segregated South, in the state of Alabama,” Aaron said. “He committed his life to the struggle for justice and equality for all people.”
Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California noted that Lewis stood not just for an end to racial discrimination but for gay rights, such as when he opposed the federal ban on gay marriage, and for immigrant rights, such as an end to family-separation policies.
There was no immediate announcement on funeral plans, which could be affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Georgia law says a special election must be scheduled to fill the current term of Lewis, who was first elected to represent Georgia’s majority Black 5th District in 1986, Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said. A vote would have to be held within 30 days.
In Congress, Democratic senators signaled a fight over Lewis’ legacy after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement lionizing him.
“I will never forget joining hands with John as members of Congress sang ‘We Shall Overcome’ at a 2008 ceremony honoring his friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” McConnell wrote. “It could not have been more humbling to consider what he had suffered and sacrificed so those words could be sung in that place.”
The Democrats noted that McConnell had refused to bring the 2020 Voting Rights Act, passed by the House, up for a vote before the Republican-controlled Senate. The measure would restore federal oversight of state elections after the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated much of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013.
Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others urged McConnell to allow a vote, and several said it should be given a new name: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
In the last chapter of his life, Lewis wept while watching the video of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minnesota. “I kept saying to myself: How many more? How many young Black men will be murdered?” he said last month.
Yet he declared or, at least, dared to hope: “We’re one people, we’re one family. We all live in the same house. Not just the American house but the world house.”