The lion of civil rights movements in the US John Lewis has bowed out of the world stage.He was 80 and is the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Lewis joined King and four other civil rights leaders in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. He spoke to the vast crowd just before King delivered his epochal “I Have a Dream” speech.
John lewis was just 25 at 1965 when he led some 600 protesters in the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.The brutal beating he got by the Alabama State trropers left him with a fractured skull but his sheer determination pressed the President Lyndon Johnson to pass the Voting Rights Act. The bill became law later that year, removing barriers that had barred Blacks from voting.He became a celebrated Congress man after the incident.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed Lewis’ passing late Friday night, calling him “one of the greatest heroes of American history.” “All of us were humbled to call Congressman Lewis a colleague, and are heartbroken by his passing,” Pelosi said. “May his memory be an inspiration that moves us all to, in the face of injustice, make ‘good trouble, necessary trouble.’”
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