John Lewis

Background

John Robert Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama. He was the third child of 10 children, to mother Willie Mae Carter and father Eddie Lewis. He died on July 17, 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia from pancreatic cancer. Lewis was an American civil rights reader and politician until his death. He was most commonly known for his chairmanship of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (S.N.C.C.). He was a part of the big six who lead the march in 1965 that was met with police violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. This march became a historical landmark event known as “Bloody Sunday.”

In John Lewis’ younger years, he didn’t get much formal education, being from a small town in Alabama. He attended school in a beautiful little building called Rosenwald School which was supported by the community. As he grew older, he began going into the city more with his family where he experienced racism and segregation.

In 1955 Lewis gained note of Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio and that began his interest in activism, attending the Montgomery bus boycott later that year. At 15 Lewis preached his first public sermon. At 17, he met Rosa Parks who was notable for her involvement in the Montgomery bus boycott, and he met Luther King Jr. when he was 18. Lewis graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, and was officially ordained as a Baptist minister. He then furthered his studies at Fisk University, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy.

As a student, John Lewis organized sit-ins at the segregated lunch counters in Nashville and played an important role in the Nashville Student Movement, established in 1961. Lewis has fulfilled many key roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the U.S.A.