Presented by Bro. Harry Campbell
Congressman John Lewis was born to sharecroppers on February 21st, 1940, near Troy, Alabama. He passed away on July 17th, 2020, after a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years old.
As a boy, John heard radio broadcasts of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., words during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and was compelled to become part of the movement.
In 1960 he participated in the first mass lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, TN and as a freedom rider was badly beaten by a white mob in Montgomery. In 1963 at the age of 23 he was keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington that same year, he became chairperson of the student nonviolent coordinating committee.
Lewis organized voter registration efforts and community action programs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. Lewis led over 600 peaceful protestors across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Alabama State Troopers attacked them at the bridge in violent confrontation that became known as “Bloody Sunday” News coverage made the nation aware of the injustice and brutality of the segregated south and served to move forward the passage of the Voting Right Act of 1965.
Lewis served as a U.S. Representative of Georgia’s 5th Congressional District from November 1986 until his passing. In 2015 he was granted the highest civilian honor, the medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. While standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama the civil rights leader said, “Get in Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble.” Lewis’s quote is a call to action to stand up for what is right, even if it means getting into trouble. It’s a reminder that people can make a difference in society, and that they should not be afraid to speak out.
We’re indebted to Congressman Lewis whose fight for racial equality and encouragement to “keep the faith” truly helped spread the message that “what happened in Selma change the world”