- Former President Barack Obama expressed his condolences after the death of veteran Georgia lawmaker and civil rights activist John Lewis.
- “He loved this country so much that he risked his life and blood so that he could fulfill his promise,” Obama said. “And through the decades, not only did he give himself entirely to the cause of freedom and justice, but he inspired the generations that followed to try to live up to his example.”
- The two legislators had deep admiration for each other. Before Obama’s inauguration, Lewis said, “I don’t know if I can control myself.”
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Former President Barack Obama on Friday expressed his condolences in a statement after the death of veteran Georgia lawmaker and civil rights leader John Lewis.
Lewis died at 80, seven months after he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.
“He loved this country so much that he risked his life and blood so that he could fulfill his promise,” Obama said in his statement. “And through the decades, not only did he give himself entirely to the cause of freedom and justice, but he inspired the generations that followed to try to live up to his example.”
“Not many of us live to see our own legacy unfold in such a significant and remarkable way. John Lewis did,” added Obama. “And thanks to him, we now all have our marching orders: to continue to believe in the possibility of remaking this country that we love until it fulfills its promise.”
The two lawmakers had deep admiration for each other, despite Lewis’s early endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s Democratic primary campaign in 2008. Lewis would later endorse Obama and the two would eventually march together on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. , Alabama, where in 1965 civil rights activists like Lewis protested during “Bloody Sunday.”
“Barack was born long before he could experience or understand the movement,” Lewis said of Obama and the civil rights era in a 2009 New York article. “He had to move toward him in his own time, but it is so clear that he digested it, the spirit and language of the movement. “
Obama awarded Lewis with the President the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest honor for civilians, in 2011.
Before Obama’s inauguration, held just a day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the time, Lewis said, “I don’t know if I can control myself.”
“I’m going to try to keep my balance and not have what I call an out-of-body experience,” Lewis told TIME. “I want to be able to see the mall and pass the Washington Monument and take a look at the Lincoln Memorial, where we were 45 years ago.”
“I never thought, never dreamed, of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected President of the United States,” Lewis added. “My mother lived to see me elected to Congress, but I wish my mother and father were close. They would be so happy and proud, and they would be so satisfied. And they would be saying that the fight, and what we did and are trying to do, was worth the pain.
After Obama swore his first term, Lewis asked him to sign a commemorative image, according to The New Yorker. Obama reportedly signed it: “Thanks to you, John. Barack Obama.”
