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In his memoirs, Lewis said Alabama’s “Bloody Sunday” was a strange day from the get-go. “It was gloomy and subdued, almost like a funeral procession,” he wrote in “Walking with the Wind” of the march he led with Hosea Williams. “There were no big names up front, no celebrities. This was just people moving through the streets of Selma. “
Calling him “a personal hero,” Senator John McCain described Lewis’s actions that day as an example of America’s most basic dreams. “In the United States, we have always believed that if the day were disappointing, we would win tomorrow,” McCain wrote in “The Restless Wave” of 2018. “That’s what John Lewis believed when he crossed this bridge.”
Images of that day’s beatings in Alabama pushed President Lyndon B. Johnson to take action on civil rights legislation. “Something about that day in Selma touched a deeper nerve than anything that had happened before,” Lewis later wrote.
After Selma and with each passing month, SNCC became more militant. The organization grew to reflect the disappointment of those who saw progress as too slow. “Something was born in Selma, but something died there too,” Lewis wrote in “Walking with the Wind.” “The path of non-violence had essentially been exhausted.” (King’s assassination in 1968 was another devastating blow against non-violence advocates.)
In 1966 Lewis lost the presidency of Stokely Carmichael, champion of the slogan “Black Power”. “My life, my identity, most of my existence, was tied to the SNCC,” Lewis recalled in “Walking With the Wind.” “Now all of a sudden I felt annoyed.”
In 1968, he worked on the Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign. On the night of the California primaries, he was campaigning at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy dead.
Lewis moved to the Voter Education Project in 1970, and in 1977 made his first stab at electoral politics, unsuccessfully running for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.
After a season on the Atlanta City Council, he tried again for the House in 1986 and won, beating fellow activist Julian Bond. He remained in the House after that, a fervent Democratic supporter but who said his mission never changed.
“My general duty,” Lewis wrote in 1998, “as I said during that 1986 campaign and during every campaign since then, has been to uphold and apply to our entire society the principles that formed the foundation of the movement to which I have dedicated my life. whole. “
Lewis spent years lobbying for a National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, introducing legislation each year until it was finally passed in 2003. “Giving up dreams is not an option for me,” he wrote when the museum opened in 2016. .
Although he is not the author of many important laws, some subjects drew his eloquence. In March 2010, in the closing stages of the fierce debate on the Affordable Care Act, he fought for its passage. “This may be the most important vote we cast as members of this body,” said Lewis. “We have a moral obligation tonight, tonight, to make health care a right and not a privilege.”
In 2016, he was one of the leaders of a one-time sit-down on the Chamber floor in support of gun safety legislation. Give us a vote. We are going to vote. We came here to do our job, ”he said. (The sitting failed).
Over time, he came to be seen as the living embodiment of the civil rights movement.
He received many awards: a Ford Theater Lincoln Medal, a National Trust for Historic Preservation Hero Preservation Award, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, the Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center, a Dole Award for Leadership named Bob Dole, and a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for lifetime achievement, among others. Stephan James portrayed him in the 2014 film “Selma”. The universities showered him with honorary degrees. In 2016, the U.S. Navy announced that it would name a ship, a replenishment oiler, after it.
During his career in Congress, Lewis often led bipartisan delegations of lawmakers to the Edmund Pettus Bridge to recreate Sunday’s bloody march. Those members would leave the trips promising to work for a more equitable society, which pleased Lewis.
In 2013, he released a trilogy titled “March,” graphic novels written with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell that chronicled the first decades of his life. In 2016, the third installment became the first graphic novel to win a National Book Award. “I grew up in rural Alabama, very, very poor with very few books in our house,” Lewis said as he accepted the award.
The “March” books used Obama’s inauguration as a framing device. Lewis was initially a supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2008, but the Obama election highlighted Lewis. The new president signed him a photograph: “Thanks to you, John.”
Trump’s years were different. Lewis had argued with Republicans before, including calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, but disputes with Trump escalated rapidly. Lewis said he did not believe Trump was “a legitimate president” and announced that he would not attend the inauguration.
Trump replied on Twitter. “Congressman John Lewis should spend more time fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention … infested crime) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. Everyone talks, talks, talks, there is no action or results. Sad! “, Said.
Lewis remained a prominent enemy of Trump. “I think it’s racist,” Lewis said of the president in January 2018.
Lewis’s diagnosis of cancer in late 2019 led to a great deal of support. “There is no bigger New Year’s resolution, and it starts right now: Pray for John Lewis,” Scott Simon of NPR tweeted. That day, Obama tweeted, “If there’s one thing I love about @RepJohnLewis, it’s his unparalleled willingness to fight. I know he has a lot more of that left.”
In 2009, Lewis met with a white man named Elwin Wilson, who was among those who attacked Lewis and other Freedom Riders in 1961. After Obama’s election in 2008, Wilson said he had an epiphany and traveled to Washington to apologize for his violent acts and seeks Lewis’s forgiveness. Lewis gave it freely.
“It is in line with the philosophy of non-violence,” Lewis later told the New York Times. “That’s what the movement was always about, having the capacity to forgive and move towards reconciliation.”
John Bresnahan contributed to this article.
