A man who was beaten for demanding dignity—and never once stopped demanding it.
John Robert Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, near Pike County, Alabama. The son of sharecroppers, he was inspired by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. as a teenager and never turned back. By 23 he was speaking at the March on Washington. On March 7, 1965—Bloody Sunday—he led 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where Alabama state troopers fractured his skull with a billy club. The images broadcast that night shocked the nation and accelerated passage of the Voting Rights Act. Lewis was arrested 45 times fighting for civil rights. He went on to serve 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, remaining a moral compass for his colleagues until his final days. He died on July 17, 2020, of pancreatic cancer—still urging people to make 'good trouble.'
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime.”
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
Embodied the courage of the civil rights movement for six decades in Congress, refusing to let the nation forget the price paid for the right to vote.
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