John Lewis

Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who carried the movement into national office.

Overview

Chairman of SNCC and the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, Lewis had his skull fractured by Alabama troopers at Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. First elected in 1986, he served Atlanta until his death in 2020, becoming the conscience of the Congress on voting rights, pressing reauthorization of the 1965 act in 2006, and staging a 2016 sit-in on the House floor for gun measures. Arrested more than 40 times across his life, he wrote the graphic memoir March to teach the movement to the young. He was the first Black member of Congress to lie in state in the rotunda.