John Lewis

February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020

Civil rights leader, Freedom Rider, and longtime U.S. Congressman known for "good trouble."

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John Lewis rose from a sharecropper's farm in Alabama to become one of the bravest leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and, for more than three decades, "the conscience of the Congress." Across a 60-year life of activism, he was beaten, jailed, and nearly killed for his belief that ordinary people have a duty to make "good trouble" against injustice. ## A preacher to the chickens Born on February 21, 1940, near Troy, Alabama, Lewis was the son of sharecroppers. As a boy he dreamed of being a preacher, practicing his sermons on the family's chickens. He grew up under the daily humiliations of segregation, and as a teenager he was inspired by radio broadcasts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Bus Boycott unfolding not far away. ## Sit-ins and Freedom Rides As a college student in Nashville, Lewis embraced the philosophy of nonviolence and helped lead lunch-counter sit-ins, calmly enduring beatings and arrests to desegregate the city. In 1961 he became one of the original Freedom Riders, integrated groups who rode buses into the Deep South and were savagely attacked by mobs. He was arrested dozens of times, and considered it an honor. ## The youngest of the "Big Six" By 1963, at just 23, Lewis was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and one of the "Big Six" leaders who organized the March on Washington. His fiery speech that day, softened at the last minute by nervous elders, still demanded freedom "now." ## Bloody Sunday Lewis's defining moment came on March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama. Leading some 600 marchers for voting rights across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, he was met by state troopers who charged the peaceful crowd, fracturing his skull. The televised images of "Bloody Sunday" horrified the nation and gave President Johnson the momentum to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the movement's greatest victories. Lewis carried the scars for the rest of his life. ## The conscience of the Congress In 1986, Lewis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia, and he served for 33 years until his death from cancer in 2020. He never stopped protesting, getting arrested even as a congressman, and he became beloved for a phrase that summed up his whole life: get into "good trouble, necessary trouble." His graphic-novel memoir March introduced his story to a new generation. ## Learn more Read more from the Stanford King Institute on John Lewis or the Wikipedia biography. You can place him in the wider story in the Civil Rights Movement journey.

John Lewis

Further reading