John Lewis marched beside Martin Luther King for African American rights. His childhood, his career, the affection of people following his death.
"Because of you, John". Because of you, John: these are the words that Barack Obama said to John Lewis when, in 2008, he became the first African American to be elected president of the United States.
Lewis was born in Alabama, in the city of Troy, in 1940. His parents were sharecroppers. For the first years of his life he knew few white people: he spent his days out in the open countryside, among animals. At the age of sixteen, however, something changed. Perhaps his very existence. Together with his brothers and sisters he went into town to visit the library. When they arrived, though, they were not allowed to enter: Black people were not permitted inside.
Just a year later, the young Lewis met Rosa Parks, who had become famous some time earlier for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white person, thereby sparking the Montgomery bus boycott, when African Americans decided to stop travelling on those buses, which were subject to racial segregation. A protest in which Martin Luther King, whom he first met in 1958, also took part.
At university, which he attended in Tennessee, Lewis organised sit-ins and other student demonstrations, succeeding in achieving integration between white and Black students in school canteens.
Together with Martin Luther King, in 1961 he became one of the thirteen historic freedom riders: alongside groups of activists of various ethnicities, they travelled on interstate bus lines through the South to break down the barriers and social attitudes typical of white Southerners, who believed seats should be segregated by race.
If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.
– John Lewis
Two years later, he not only became president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (which he had helped to found), but was also among the organisers of the March on Washington, as one of the famous big six, which also included King. That day was memorable. Lewis spoke first, then King delivered his world-famous speech I Have a Dream. A dream that, sadly, has yet to be realised.
In 1965, on 7 March to be precise, John Lewis survived a tragic episode that went down in history as Bloody Sunday. He led, alongside his friend Hosea Williams, more than six hundred activists across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The police, however, responded with violence against the demonstrators, beating them with batons. Lewis suffered a fractured skull and from that day on he wore his scars almost as a symbol of "a struggle that lasts a lifetime", as he himself described the fight for the recognition of African American rights.
You cannot be afraid to speak up and speak out for what you believe in. You have to have courage. Pure courage.
– John Lewis
After a period in New York, Lewis moved to Atlanta, Georgia, which remained his home until his death. He married Lillian Miles in 1968, whom he had met at a New Year's Eve party, and together they had one son: John-Miles. She died on 31 December 2012.
November 1986 was a pivotal month in the leader's life, when he was elected a member of the House of Representatives for the state of Georgia. He officially took up the role on 3 January 1987. He was re-elected sixteen times.
During his political career, as a member of the Democratic Party, he was unhappy about the election of George W. Bush in 2000, while he supported Obama's campaign in 2008 and compared then-president Donald Trump to George Wallace, the 45th Governor of Alabama, known for his segregationist and populist positions. Ahead of that year's presidential election, Lewis threw his support behind Joe Biden.
Every year he returned to Alabama to commemorate the march from Selma to Montgomery. In 1998 he set foot again, after 42 years, in the library from which he had been turned away as a boy. He was welcomed warmly by both Black and white people, and signed copies of his book Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement for them. He campaigned for the establishment, in the US capital Washington, of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened its doors on 25 September 2016. In Atlanta, on the civil rights activists' walk of fame, his footprints are also there.
In December 2019 he announced that he had stage four pancreatic cancer. A new battle for him. Nevertheless, he never stopped fighting for what he believed in, going so far as to take to the streets again with demonstrators from the Black Lives Matter movement, whose protests swept across the United States — and beyond — following the brutal murder by a police officer of George Floyd, an African American. For Lewis it was like a journey back in time, and seeing the commitment of these young people moved him deeply.
The great leader passed away on the night of 17 July, leaving an enormous void both in his family and in American society. The announcement came from the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who remembered him as "one of the greatest heroes of American history. A titan of the civil rights movement, whose goodness, faith and courage transformed an entire nation. John Lewis dedicated every single day of his life to the achievement of freedom and justice for all."
He was honoured and respected for being the conscience of Congress and an icon of American history, but to us he was a beloved father and brother. He devoted his entire life to non-violent activism and was a leading figure in the struggle for justice in the United States. We will miss him.
– The family of John Lewis
Donald Trump also expressed his condolences over Lewis's death, ordering flags to be flown at half-mast. The residents of Atlanta proudly showed their affection for the congressman by gathering near one of the city's main murals, where they left flowers, balloons, banners and candles.
Many are calling for the Edmund Pettus Bridge to be renamed in honour of a man who sacrificed himself for others, a man who never stopped pursuing his goals, whose deeds will never be forgotten, whose smile will live on in that of the young African Americans who received the baton from him.