Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

US civil rights leader John Lewis, who died last night PA Images

US politician and civil rights leader John Lewis dies aged 80

He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists.

LAST UPDATE | 18 Jul 2020

US REPRESENTATIVE AND civil rights leader John Lewis has died at the age of 80.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed his passing late last night, calling the veteran politician “one of the greatest heroes of American history”.

Lewis received tributes from both Democrats and Republicans when he announced in December that he had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.

He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by Martin Luther King Jr that had the greatest impact on the movement.

He was best known for leading some 600 protesters in the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

At the age of 25 — walking at the head of the march with his hands tucked in the pockets of his tan overcoat — Lewis was knocked to the ground and beaten by police.

His skull was fractured, and nationally televised images of the brutality forced the country’s attention on racial oppression in the South.

Within days, King led more marches in the state, and President Lyndon B Johnson soon pressed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act.

The bill became law later that year, removing barriers that had barred black people from voting.

Lewis turned to politics in 1981, when he was elected to the Atlanta City Council. He won his seat in Congress in 1986 and spent much of his career in the minority.

After Democrats won control of the House in 2006, Lewis became his party’s senior deputy whip, a behind-the-scenes leadership post in which he helped keep the party unified.

Lewis said he had been arrested 40 times in the 1960s, and five more times as a congressman.

At 78, he told a rally he would do it again to help reunite immigrant families separated by the Trump government.

“There cannot be any peace in America until these young children are returned to their parents and set all of our people free,” Lewis said in June, recalling the “good trouble” he got into protesting segregation as a young man.

“If we fail to do it, history will not be kind to us,” he shouted. “I will go to the border. I’ll get arrested again. If necessary, I’m prepared to go to jail.”

In a speech the day of the House impeachment vote of Donald Trump, Lewis explained the importance of that vote.

“When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something. Our children and their children will ask us ‘what did you do? what did you say?’

“We have a mission and a mandate to be on the right side of history.”

Mr Lewis’s wife of four decades, Lillian Miles, died in 2012. They had one son, John Miles Lewis.

Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.

View 66 comments
Close
66 Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy here before taking part.
Leave a Comment
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Thomas Hannigan
    Favourite Thomas Hannigan
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 7:20 AM

    Councillors and ex TDs walk from corruption charges,and not one column reporting this..The silence is deafening,, ,,,,,,

    36
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Dermot Lane
    Favourite Dermot Lane
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 8:10 AM

    True Thomas.

    9
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute the lost lenore
    Favourite the lost lenore
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 9:25 AM

    Incroyable! The Journal runs an opinion piece that’s not about sexism. Give yourselves a pat on the back, that must have been difficult.

    24
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Little Jim
    Favourite Little Jim
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 11:28 AM

    Typical male attitude.!

    9
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute the lost lenore
    Favourite the lost lenore
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 11:31 AM

    I demand a quota system to redress the gender imbalance of this thread.

    9
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Emily Elephant
    Favourite Emily Elephant
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 7:55 AM

    It’s nuts to think that you can entrust decisions about people’s liberty to 12 unqualified people, and at the same time not trust those 12 unqualified people to look at the evidence presented in court rather than media hysteria.

    22
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Enola Straight
    Favourite Enola Straight
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 8:08 AM

    Unqualified? Do elaborate.

    2
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute ieoinu
    Favourite ieoinu
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 7:19 PM

    I disagree, the jury system is not without its faults but it is the fairest system there is. The principle of interpretation of our laws is based in that of the reasonable man and that when tried you are judged by your peers. If you have qualified people on a jury (by qualified people trained to do the task, familiar with laws, procedures etc basically quasi judges) you remove this element of the reasonable or normal person. The example I would give would be Padraig Nally, he did everything needed that a professional jury would have been quite right to convict him of at least manslaughter. However a jury of his peers (seeing things they their own eyes and drawing from their own experiences) acquitted him albeit on a retrial.

    Now a professional jury drawing a wage and living in middle Ireland may not be able to draw on such experience or perspective and arrive at the same conclusion. My experiences come from the prosecution end of things and seeing cases fall because of a jury’s verdict is aggravating and frustrating but it has to be respected, it is what protects all of us from all of us.

    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute George Barwood
    Favourite George Barwood
    Report
    Jul 26th 2013, 1:19 AM

    I’m in some kind of battle with the UK Press Complaints Commission, re Daily Mail comment policy on a recent high profile US case.

    http://jodi-arias.wikispaces.com/Daily+Mail+complaint

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paul Roche
    Favourite Paul Roche
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 8:58 AM

    Fergal,
    Proposed legislation for “Family Law” and “whistleblower protection” will create new offences where information disclosed relating to decisions made in unaccountable courts.
    Judicial accountability is key for those who would decide on what is in the public interest.

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute itiswhatitisMF
    Favourite itiswhatitisMF
    Report
    Jul 25th 2013, 8:37 AM

    Bankers and the elite and politicians have one law the rest have another. 2 tier system.

    2
Submit a report
Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
Thank you for the feedback
Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.

Leave a commentcancel

 
JournalTv
News in 60 seconds