John R. Lewis

Congressman John Lewis represented Georgia’s 5th Congressional District from 1987 until his death on July 17, 2020 (100th-116th Congresses). Lewis began his public advocacy during the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century. He was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was one of the “Big Six” leaders who organized the 1963 March on Washington. He also led the first of three Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, including Bloody Sunday, when state troopers and police attacked the marchers. Later, Lewis became executive director of the Voter Education Project and testified in front of a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee on the need to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. For more than three decades in Congress, Lewis served on several committees, including Ways and Means, Public Works and Transportation, Interior and Insular Affairs, the House Select Committee on Aging, Budget, and the Joint Committee on Taxation. In addition to his committee responsibilities, Lewis was part of the Democratic whip operation for 30 years. While in the House, Lewis was one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, serving from 1991 as a chief deputy whip and from 2003 as a senior chief deputy whip. When the Voting Rights Act was set to expire in 2007, Lewis was at the forefront of the Democratic effort to reauthorize the legislation and opposed amendments that he said made it harder to register to vote. Notably, Lewis proposed legislation to establish a national museum of African American history in 1991. He worked tirelessly to gather support for the measure. His bill creating the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, was finally signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003. The museum opened on the National Mall in 2016. Lewis received many honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. Lewis graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary with a bachelor’s degree and earned a degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University.