| John Lewis | |
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| Incumbent | |
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Assumed office January 3, 1987 |
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| Preceded by | Wyche Fowler |
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| Born | February 21, 1940 Troy, Alabama |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Lillian Miles |
| Residence | Atlanta, Georgia |
| Alma mater | American Baptist Theological Seminary, Fisk University |
| Occupation | political consultant, civil rights leader |
| Religion | Baptist |
John Robert Lewis (born February 21, 1940) is an American politician and was a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and played a key role in the struggle to end segregation. Lewis, a member of the Democratic Party, has represented Georgia's 5th congressional district (map) in the United States House of Representatives since 1987. The district encompasses almost all of Atlanta.
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Born in Troy, Alabama, the son of Meline Thas, Lewis was educated at the American Baptist Theological Seminary and at Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tennessee, where he became active in the local sit-in movement. He participated in the Freedom Rides to desegregate the South, and was a national leader in the struggle for civil rights.[1]
Lewis was instrumental in organizing student sit-ins, bus boycotts and non-violent protests in the fight for voter and racial equality. He endured brutal beatings by angry mobs and suffered a fractured skull at the hands of Alabama State police as he led a march of 600 people in Selma, Ala. in 1965.[1][2]
Lewis became nationally known during his prominent role in the Selma to Montgomery marches. During the first march police attacked the peaceful demonstrators and beat Lewis mercilessly in public, leaving head wounds that are still visible today. At the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of 1963, Lewis, a representative of [SNCC], the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was the youngest speaker.[2]
Historian Howard Zinn wrote: "At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), John Lewis, speaking to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, was prepared to ask the right question: 'Which side is the federal government on?’ That sentence was eliminated from his speech by organizers of the March to avoid offending the Kennedy Administration. But Lewis and his fellow SNCC workers had experienced, again and again, the strange passivity of the national government in the face of Southern violence."[3]
"John Lewis and SNCC had reason to be angry. John had been beaten bloody by a white mob in Montgomery as a Freedom Rider in the spring of 1961. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but did nothing itself, except to have FBI agents take notes. Instead of insisting that blacks and whites had a right to ride the buses together, the Kennedy Administration called for a 'cooling-off period,' a moratorium on Freedom Rides.[3]
In February 2009, forty-eight years after he had been bloodied by the Ku Klux Klan during civil rights marches, Lewis received an apology on national television from a white southerner, former Klansman Elwin Wilson.[3] [4]
"I'm so sorry about what happened back then," Wilson said breathlessly. "It's OK. I forgive you," Lewis responded. (On national television, both men recalled the incident.) "[I remember] going directly to the Greyhound bus station," Lewis said. "We tried to enter a so-called 'white' waiting room and the moment we started through the door, a group of young men attacked us." Wilson was in the group, but said he "did more than help." He said he was the main attacker. The outburst, Wilson said, was just part of a life of hate he led for years. "I had a black baby doll in this house, and I had a little rope, and I tied it to a limb and let it hang here," he said.[5] [6]
After leaving SNCC in 1966, Lewis worked with community organizations and was named community affairs director for the National Consumer Co-op Bank in Atlanta.
Lewis has cited former Florida Senator and Congressman Claude Pepper, a staunch supporter of the New Deal and an outspoken liberal during his half-century in politics, as being the colleague that he has most admired.[4]
Lewis first ran for elective office in 1977, when a vacancy occurred in Georgia’s 5th District. A special election was called after President Jimmy Carter appointed incumbent Congressman Andrew Young to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Lewis lost the race to Atlanta City Councilman and future Senator Wyche Fowler.
After his unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1977, Lewis was without a job and in debt from his campaign. He accepted a position with the Carter administration as associate director of ACTION, responsible for running the VISTA program, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, and the Foster Grandparent Program. He held that job for two and a half years, resigning as the 1980 election approached.[5] In 1981, Lewis was elected to the Atlanta City Council.
In 1986, when Fowler ran for the United States Senate, Lewis defeated fellow civil rights leader Julian Bond in the Democratic primary to succeed Fowler in the 5th District. This win was tantamount to election in the heavily Democratic, majority-black 5th District. Lewis was the second African-American to represent Georgia in Congress since Reconstruction. Young was the first. Lewis has been re-elected ten times without serious opposition, often with over 70 percent of the vote. He has been unopposed for reelection since 2002 but faced two primary opponents in 2008.
Since 1991, Lewis has been senior chief deputy whip in the Democratic caucus. He is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. He was an influential aide for the Clinton Cabinet, and had regular meetings with the administration.
Lewis is, according to the Associated Press, "the first major House figure to suggest impeaching George W. Bush," arguing that the president "deliberately, systematically violated the law" in authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct wiretaps without a warrant. Lewis said, "He is not King, he is president."[6]
Lewis, an outspoken liberal and staunch opponent of the Iraq War, endorsed Joe Lieberman for re-election to the Senate in 2006, despite Lieberman's loss to Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary.[7]
He was one of the 31 who voted in the House to not count the electoral votes from Ohio in the 2004 presidential election.[8]
Lewis delivered the Commencement Address at the University of Massachusetts Lowell on Sunday June 3, 2007 at Edward A. LeLacheur Park.
In September 2007, Lewis was awarded the Dole Leadership Prize from the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas.[9]
On October 1, 2007 Lewis paid tribute to James Meredith at the dedication of The University of Mississippi's James Meredith Monument. The speech and the monument commemorated civil rights pioneer James H. Meredith, who enrolled at the University of Mississippi in 1962, forcing its integration, and later led the 1966 James Meredith March Against Fear. After Meredith was wounded in an assassination attempt, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael continued the march that started the chant "Black Power!"
On October 21, 2007, Lewis helped to welcome the Dalai Lama of Tibet to Atlanta and Emory University.
A December 2009 report on privately financed Congressional travel by The New York Times found Lewis to be recipient of the most trips since 2007, with a total of 40.[10]
Lewis is a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
On October 12, 2007, Lewis endorsed the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.[11]
On February 14, 2008, Lewis announced he was considering withdrawing his support from Clinton and might instead cast his superdelegate vote for Barack Obama: "Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap."[12] On February 27, 2008, Lewis formally changed his support and endorsed Obama.[13][14]
After Obama clinched the Democratic nomination for president, Lewis said “If someone had told me this would be happening now, I would have told them they were crazy, out of their mind, they didn’t know what they were talking about ... I just wish the others were around to see this day. ... To the people who were beaten, put in jail, were asked questions they could never answer to register to vote, it’s amazing.”[15]
Despite switching his support to Obama, Lewis' support of Clinton for several months led to criticism from his constituents. One of his challengers in the House primary election set up campaign headquarters inside the building that served as Obama's Georgia office.[16]
In October 2008, Lewis generated significant controversy by issuing a statement criticising the campaign of John McCain and Sarah Palin and comparing their actions to those of certain segregationists, specifically George Wallace, during the American Civil Rights Movement, stating that "What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. [Sarah] Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse." As the controversy surrounding his statements escalated, Lewis quickly re-issued a subsequent statement claiming that he never intended to compare McCain and Palin to Wallace himself, rather that his early statement was simply a "reminder to all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior."”[17]
Lewis was present on the stage during the inauguration of Barack Obama, as the only living speaker from the rally at the March on Washington. Obama signed a commemorative photograph for Lewis with the words, “Because of you, John. Barack Obama.”[18]
Lewis was arrested April 27, 2009 outside the Sudan embassy during a protest against genocide in Darfur.[19] The Representative and four other US Congressional Representatives were protesting the blocking of aid to victims. They were arrested after ignoring warnings issued by police maintaining a police line to protect the embassy in Washington D.C.
The other representatives arrested during the protest were Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), Donna Edwards (D-Maryland), Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota), and Lynn Woolsey (D-California).
| United States House of Representatives | ||
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| Preceded by Wyche Fowler |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia's 5th congressional district January 3, 1987 – present |
Incumbent |
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