Remembering John Lewis, a civil rights icon and `American hero.'
FILE - In this Thursday, May 10, 2007 file photo, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, R-Ga., in his office on Capitol Hill, in Washington. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020.
Searing TV images of that brutality helped to galvanize national opposition to racial oppression and embolden leaders in Washington to pass the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act five months later. “John is an American hero who helped lead a movement and risked his life for our most fundamental rights; he bears scars that attest to his indefatigable spirit and persistence,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said after Lewis announced his cancer diagnosis.
“This was a face-off in the most vivid terms between a dignified, composed, completely nonviolent multitude of silent protesters and the truly malevolent force of a heavily armed, hateful battalion of troopers,” Lewis wrote. “The sight of them rolling over us like human tanks was something that had never been seen before. People just couldn’t believe this was happening, not in America.”
Soon, the young man King nicknamed “the boy from Troy” was organizing sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters and volunteering as a Freedom Rider, enduring beatings and arrests while challenging segregation around the South. Lewis helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to organize this effort, led the group from 1963 to 1966 and kept pursuing civil rights work and voter registration drives for years thereafter.
Lewis initially endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, but belatedly backed Barack Obama when it became clear he had more Black support. After Obama’s swearing-in, he signed a commemorative photograph for Lewis that reflected much more than his endorsement, writing “Because of you, John. Barack Obama.” Later, they marched hand in hand in Selma on the 50th anniversary of the attack.
日本 最新ニュース, 日本 見出し
Similar News:他のニュース ソースから収集した、これに似たニュース記事を読むこともできます。
Civil Rights and Democratic Icon John Lewis DiesJohn Lewis, the champion of civil rights for Black Americans whose activism brought him from the bloodied streets of Selma, Ala., to the marble halls of Congress, died Friday. He was 80 years old.
続きを読む »
Rep. John Lewis, A Force In The Civil Rights Movement, Dead At 80BREAKING: John Lewis, an icon of the civil rights movement, has died at 80. He began his nearly 60-year career in public service leading sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the Jim Crow-era South. He went on to become a force in Democratic politics.
続きを読む »
John Lewis, lion of civil rights and Congress, dies at 80ATLANTA (AP) — John Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement whose bloody beating by Alabama state troopers in 1965 helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, and who went on to a long...
続きを読む »
John Lewis, congressman and civil rights icon, dies at 80BREAKING: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “Today, America mourns the loss of one of the greatest heroes of American history: Congressman John Lewis, the Conscience of the Congress.'
続きを読む »
Rep. John Lewis, Civil Rights Icon, Dies At Age 80The Georgia Democrat who helped organize the March on Washington and was called the "conscience of Congress," has died.
続きを読む »
John R. Lewis, front-line civil rights leader and eminence of Capitol Hill, dies at 80The Georgia Democrat spent three decades in Congress defending the crucial gains he had helped achieve for people of color.
続きを読む »