Rep. John Lewis was a figure of moral authority, grounded in his adherence to principles of equal rights and nonviolent protest, and in his willingness to repeatedly put his life on the line.
John Lewis rubbed the scar on his forehead, a reminder of the fractured skull he suffered when Alabama state troopers assaulted civil rights marchers trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965.
"It just reminds me that some of us gave a little blood on that bridge to redeem the soul of America, to make America better," Lewis said.Rep. John Lewis, who 'risked his life and his blood' as a giant of the civil rights movement, dies of cancer at 80 "I thought I was going to die on that bridge," Lewis said of the iconic Selma march, saying he expected it to be his final protest. The notion that down the road he might counsel presidents and serve in Congress for decades would have been unfathomable then.
As a young man, Lewis was one of a half-dozen civil rights leaders who met with John Kennedy in 1963 to tell him they were holding a March on Washington, news that the White House didn't welcome. Two years later, Lyndon Johnson presented him with one of the pens he used to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the photos of the brutal crackdown on the Edmund Pettus Bridge propelled its passage.
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