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Washington:
John Lewis, the civil rights warrior who died Friday aged 80, excelled at what he appreciated to name “good trouble” — standing up in opposition to racial injustice to forge a greater United States.
The African-American icon marched with Martin Luther King Jr., was almost overwhelmed to dying by police, and later as a sitting congressman was arrested a number of occasions for protesting genocide or main immigration reform sit-ins.
“From a historical standpoint, there are few who are able to become giants,” Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of the civil rights icon, instructed CNN. “John Lewis really became a giant through his examples that he set for all of us.”
Lewis was a sharecropper’s son whose fights for justice helped outline an period, and whose ethical authority as an indomitable elder statesman left a everlasting imprint in Congress.
He was recognized with stage four pancreatic most cancers in late 2019.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted this on Saturday: “Rep. John Lewis was an icon of the civil rights movement, and he leaves an enduring legacy that will never be forgotten. We hold his family in our prayers, as we remember Rep. John Lewis’ incredible contributions to our country.”
The flag on the White House flew at half-staff Saturday morning. House speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered flags on the Capitol to be lowered as nicely.
But Lewis had clashed with President Donald Trump on a number of events — boycotting his inauguration and citing Russian interference within the 2016 election to query his legitimacy.
Trump in flip stated Lewis’s Georgia district was “horrible” and the congressman was “all talk” and “no action.”
Risked “life and blood”
Lewis was simply 21 when he grew to become a founding member of the Freedom Riders, who fought segregation of the US transportation system within the early 1960s, ultimately turning into one of many nation’s strongest voices for justice and equality.
He was the youngest chief of the 1963 March on Washington, wherein King delivered his well-known “I have a dream” speech.
Two years later Lewis almost died whereas main lots of of marchers throughout the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on a peace march to Montgomery when state troopers, in search of to intimidate these demonstrating for voting rights for black Americans, attacked protesters.
Lewis suffered a fractured cranium that day, which might change into often called “Bloody Sunday.”
Fifty years later in 2015, he walked throughout the bridge arm in arm with Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, to mark the anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march.
Obama offered Lewis with the Medal of Freedom, among the many nation’s highest civilian honors, at a White House ceremony in 2011.
“Not many of us get to live to see our own legacy play out in such a meaningful, remarkable way. John Lewis did,” Obama tweeted early Saturday.
“He loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise,” Obama added.
Another civil rights large additionally died Friday.
Reverend CT Vivian staged anti-segregation sit-ins within the 1940s, was an early advisor to King and helped arrange the Freedom Rides. He died early Friday at 95.
“Conscience of Congress”
John Lewis was born in Troy, Alabama on February 21, 1940, the third of 10 kids.
His group was virtually fully black, and he shortly discovered concerning the segregation that bothered Alabama.
Lewis, who organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and was arrested two dozen occasions for non-violent protests, was a founder and eventual chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the place he wrote speeches in opposition to police brutality and campaigned to register black voters.
He was elected to Congress in 1986 and shortly grew to become a determine of ethical authority.
Tributes poured in from Democrats and Republicans alike.
“Today, America mourns the loss of one of the greatest heroes of American history,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated of the 17-term congressman from Georgia. She described Lewis as “a titan of the civil rights movement.”
And Republican Senator Mitt Romney, posting on Twitter, referred to as Lewis a person of “unwavering principle, unassailable character, penetrating purpose, and heartfelt compassion.”
In current months, Lewis had stepped away from his congressional duties as he underwent remedy for most cancers.
But he returned to Washington in early June, within the midst of fiery demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, to stroll in Black Lives Matter Plaza, the renamed intersection close to the White House that was the positioning of protests in opposition to injustice.
“The winds are blowing, the great change is going to come,” Lewis stated days earlier throughout a lawmakers’ dialogue on race.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
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