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John Lewis, Part 6: The Conscience of Congress
John Lewis served Georgia’s 5th Congressional District for 17 distinguished terms, from 1987 until his passing in 2020. He was the second Black American to be elected to Congress from Georgia since Reconstruction and the only former major civil rights leader to continue his fight for justice in the halls of Congress. Despite representing the most Democratic district in Georgia
John Lewis, Part 5: August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The 250,000-person March on Washington was a resounding success, so most critics fell silent after the event. All the more reason to identify and reflect on the opposition that tested the moral courage and steely conviction required to pull off such a risky venture during such a volatile time in U.S. history. Leading up to the March, President Kennedy was
John Lewis, Part 4: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Founded in 1960, SNCC focused on empowering young people, primarily Black college students, in nonviolent direct-action against Jim Crow segregation and racial inequality in the South. During Lewis’s tenure as Chairman, 1963-1966, SNCC led or collaborated on numerous campaigns and actions, including: March on Washington (1963): 23-year-old Lewis was the youngest organizer of the 250,000-person March on Washington for Jobs
John Lewis, Part 3: The 1961 Freedom Rides
On May 4, 1961, 13 passengers – including 21-year-old seminary student John Lewis – boarded two buses in Washington, DC, bound for New Orleans. Their goal? Challenge and expose state laws that continued to enforce segregation on buses and in bus terminals despite the 1960 Boynton v. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the segregation of interstate travel. This was
John Lewis, Part 2: The Nashville Sit-Ins
After graduating in 1957 from a segregated high school in rural Alabama, John Lewis moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he graduated from American Baptist Theological Seminary in 1961 and was ordained as a Baptist minister. Two years later, he earned a BA in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University. Lewis’s plans of becoming a Baptist minister were derailed, however, by
John Lewis, Part 1: Growing up in Rural Alabama in the Jim Crow Era
Seeds of John Lewis’s activism can be traced back to his early childhood near the town of Troy in rural Alabama. Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, and raised with nine siblings on a cotton farm where his parents and siblings and, earlier, his grandparents worked long hours for little pay as sharecroppers – in the early 1940s, the