Figure in the struggle for African-American civil rights, John Lewis, Georgia’s representative in Congress for more than thirty years, died Friday, July 17, of pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years old.
At 76, he was still thundering in the hemicycle of the House of Representatives. “ Does this institution have a heart? Where is our soul? Where is our moral leadership? Where is our courage? He cursed, as he led a sit-in in front of the perch of the speaker then Republican to protest congressional inaction on guns after a nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida.
Courage and conviction have never failed what the first African-American president in the history of the United States, Barack Obama, called ” hero In the long tribute he paid him. Born into a poor family of sharecroppers in Alabama on February 21, 1940, John Lewis was first drawn to faith. He prowls near the poultry for which he is responsible, duly baptized and buried with the last sacraments. At 15, however, he was captivated by the indictments of a pastor, Martin Luther King, against the racial discrimination he experienced every day, but that his parents recommended him to accept as inevitable.
Pacifist convictions
His entry into a seminar in Nashville, where studies are free, allows him to deepen his pacifist and non-violent convictions, which will lead him later to refuse conscription during the Vietnam War, then to vote against the invasion of the ‘Iraq. But it is in Tennessee that he puts them to the test tirelessly. He has been arrested multiple times, beaten and even left for dead for defying the segregation practiced by a Nashville restaurant.
With his diploma as pastor in hand, John Lewis turned away from the churches to redouble his efforts against southern racial barriers, especially in transport. With others Freedom riders, it comes up against the hatred of the defenders of the status quo, often violent, under the passive gaze of the police. His determination led him to a penitentiary of sinister reputation in Mississippi, but it also paved the way for him, in 1963, for the presidency of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an essential cog in the African-American combat. Become a figure of the fight for the civil rights, John Lewis has the privilege to speak during the historic march of Washington, on August 28, at the end of which Martin Luther King delivers his most famous speech.
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