John Lewis, Civil Rights Hero and Towering Congressman, Dies at 80

Rep. John Lewis, an Alabama sharecropper's son who went on to be a hero of the civil rights movement and a congressman, died on Friday at 80. Lewis was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists who organized the 1963 March on Washington and he spoke shortly before Rev. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Lewis, who endured beatings by police officers on the front-line confrontations of the civil rights era, went on to play a towering role in U.S. politics for nearly six decades and his last years were marked by personal conflict with President Donald Trump.

"It is with inconsolable grief and enduring sadness that we announce the passing of U.S. Rep. John Lewis," Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones said in a written statement early Saturday. "He was honored and respected as the conscience of the US Congress and an icon of American history, but we knew him as a loving father and brother. He was a stalwart champion in the on-going struggle to demand respect for the dignity and worth of every human being. He dedicated his entire life to non-violent activism and was an outspoken advocate in the struggle for equal justice in America. He will be deeply missed."

Lewis died less than seven months after he said on Dec. 29 that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. "I have been in some kind of fight-for freedom, equality, basic human rights-for nearly my entire life," he said in a statement at the time. "I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now." He last appeared publicly in June, when protests had engulfed the country demanding an end to systemic racism and he walked with Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on a street close to the White House that had just been renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza. As Confederate monuments and other symbols of the country's racist past are being torn down there are increasing calls to rename the bridge where Lewis suffered a brutal beating that fractured his skull during a 1965 voting rights march. The bridge that Lewis revisited on numerous anniversaries of Bloody Sunday is named for Edmund Pettus, who fought in the Confederate Army.

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Lewis was elected to Congress in 1986 after a bitter campaign in which he beat out another civil rights leader, Julian Bond, who was widely seen as the favorite to win the race. Lewis went on to gain bipartisan respect in Washington and was revered among his Democratic colleagues, who dubbed him "the conscience of Congress" even though his liberal positions meant he often lost policy battles. In recent years, Lewis became one of the most vocal opponents of Trump even before he took office and famously boycotted his inauguration as he questioned the new president's legitimacy. When the House voted to impeach Trump in December, Lewis made clear there was no doubt in his mind about his vote. "When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something," he said on the House floor. "To do something. Our children and their children will ask us, 'What did you do? What did you say?' For some, this vote may be hard. But we have a mission and a mandate to be on the right side of history."