Lewis’ legacy, a civil rights icon that was first elected to Congress in 1986, shone during Monday’s vote.
Lewis helped organize Freedom Rides, spoke at the 1963 March in Washington, and led the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where a state police officer fractured his skull with a club. That protest galvanized national support for the Voting Rights Act, which candidates for her seat pledged to defend and expand.
Williams, seated in front of a framed photo of the Lewis police photo of an arrest during the Nashville sit-in protests of the early 1960s, campaigned on Zoom to fellow party executive committee members while “still crying” at the lost.
She noted her upbringing in rural Alabama, where Lewis also grew up, and called herself “a student at John Lewis School of Politics” who has “practiced the art of getting into ‘good trouble'”.
Williams, a state senator representing an Atlanta-based liberal district, said she was arrested and removed from the state capitol “with her hands tied” during a protest in November 2018 over the results of nearby government elections.
“We need someone who is not afraid to put himself in the line of his constituents in the same way that Congressman Lewis taught us,” he added.
The party’s executive committee overwhelmingly voted for Williams over several other candidates, who were nominated from a pool of more than 130 applicants. The other candidates were State Representative Park Cannon, Atlanta Council Member Andre Dickens, former Morehouse College President Robert Franklin, and Georgia NAACP President James “Major” Woodall. The Democratic candidate in the deep blue district is likely to win the race.
“No one could fill Congressman Lewis’s shoes,” said Williams. “Your leadership and fighting spirit is needed now more than ever in this country. I think it is imperative that we choose someone with a long history of fearlessly standing up for what is right and someone who will be in charge of the endless attacks on our rights.” . that we have become used to seeing from the Republican Party. “
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