John Lewis was 80 years old and had been ill with cancer. He was the last living leader of the African American civil rights movement in the United States.
He fought to the end, John Lewis: for freedom, equality, the dignity of every human being. What defeated him, on the night of Friday 17 July, was pancreatic cancer. The fight for human rights and for African Americans is "a lifelong battle", he had declared recently.
Lewis was one of the "big six", the principal leaders of the African American civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s, among whom was Martin Luther King. And latterly he was a supporter of the Black lives matter activists.
A lifelong battle: Lewis, born in Alabama in 1940, was one of the first freedom riders, the activists who rode on buses alongside white passengers to challenge racial segregation. He came close to death when he was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, also in Alabama, on the so-called "Bloody Sunday" of '65, when six hundred activists who were marching were attacked by police with batons and tear gas.
On 28 August 1963 Lewis spoke to a vast crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It was he who introduced Martin Luther King before he delivered the famous speech I have a dream.
Since 1986 Lewis had been a Democratic Party congressman for Georgia. He was re-elected at every vote from that point on. For at least fifty years he was a protagonist of American history, both social and political. One of the great leaders of the African American community, from Martin Luther King to Black lives matter.
The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, remembered Lewis as "a giant of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and courage transformed the nation". Even as a congressman Lewis remained true to his ideals: in the 1990s he had himself arrested several times outside the South African embassy during pickets against apartheid.
Personal history, political history and a cultural struggle for the rights of African Americans, and beyond. In June 2016 John Lewis took part in the symbolic "occupation" of the House of Representatives to demand gun control legislation. From his very inauguration he boycotted the then President of the United States, Donald Trump — to the point of pushing for his impeachment.
Finally, bringing us to the events of recent months, Lewis was moved to tears seeing the streets filled with young Americans – "not only black", as he was keen to point out – following the death of George Floyd. "They made me cry. This is a battle that lasts a whole lifetime." John Lewis's battle ends here. But his ideals will continue to walk the streets.