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 and being among the most liberal members of Congress, Lewis was known for bridging political divides. Since his first sit-in in Nashville, his overarching goal was to create a “beloved community” rooted in equity and inclusion. “It begins inside your own heart and mind, because the battleground of human transformation is really, more than any other thing, the struggle within the human consciousness to believe and accept what is true… to truly revolutionize our society, we must first revolutionize ourselves. We must be the change we seek if we are to effectively demand transformation from others.”
Until the end, John Lewis waged “good trouble,” lending moral certitude to each action.
In 1996, Lewis delivered an impassioned speech against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). He compared the opposition to DOMA to the fight against Jim Crow laws, arguing that what was the majority view back then was not always correct. He engaged in civil disobedience against Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies, marching through the streets of Washington, DC, under the banner “Families Belong Together.” He led House Democrats in a sit-in, occupying the House floor for nearly 26 hours to demand action on gun control legislation. After Clinton lost, in 2016, he refused to attend Trump’s inauguration, explaining that his absence was a “form of dissent.” Shortly thereafter, he protested among 2,000 people outside Atlanta Airport to protest the ban and detention of 11 airplane passengers taken into custody the previous day, spurred by Trump’s “Muslim Ban.”
After revealing his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, in December 2019, Lewis said, “I am going to fight it and keep fighting for the Beloved Community… We still have many bridges to cross.” Three months later, in the thick of the pandemic, he made a surprise appearance at the annual reenactment of the Selma to Montgomery march marking the 55th anniversary of the brutal attack on voting rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, including then-25-year-old John Lewis. Surrounded by marchers, Lewis urged younger generations to carry on the work of his generation of civil rights activists.
Lewis’s outspoken support for LGBTQ+ rights wasn’t always popular, including within the Congressional Black Caucus. In 2020, his funeral motorcade stopped briefly in front of the Human Rights Campaign DC headquarters, a symbolic recognition of his support for LGBTQ+ rights throughout his career.
As Obama said, in 2011, when he awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom, “Generations from now, when parents teach their children what is meant by courage, the story of John Lewis will come to mind — an American who knew that change could not wait for some other person or some other time; whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now.”
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