US congressman John Lewis, civil rights icon, dead at 80
WASHINGTON, July 18 (AFP) - John Lewis, the civil rights warrior who died Friday aged 80, excelled at what he liked to call “good trouble” -- standing up against racial injustice to forge a better United States.
The African-American icon marched with Martin Luther King Jr, was nearly beaten to death by police, and later as a sitting congressman was arrested multiple times for protesting genocide or leading immigration reform sit-ins.
Lewis was a sharecropper's son whose fights for justice helped define an era, and whose moral authority as an indomitable elder statesman left a permanent imprint in Congress.