乔治亚州民主党人和民权偶像约翰·罗伯特·刘易斯星期五去世。他已经80岁了。
在一次常规医疗检查显示他患有4期胰腺癌后，刘易斯度过了7个月。众议院议长南希·佩洛西和国会黑人核心小组证实了他的死讯。
自1987年就职以来，被称为“美国国会的良心”的刘易斯一直代表着佐治亚州的第五国会选区，其中包括亚特兰大的大部分地区。他在2019年12月的癌症诊断并没有中断这种趋势。
“所以我决定做我知道该做的事，做我一直在做的事:我要为它而战，为我所爱的社区而战。”我们仍有许多桥梁要跨越。”声明当时。
木兰花影业公司发布的这张照片显示了众议员约翰·刘易斯在“约翰·刘易斯:好麻烦。”本·阿农/木兰照片
佩洛西在一份声明中说:“约翰·刘易斯是民权运动的巨人，他的善良、信念和勇敢改变了我们的国家——从他在午餐柜台和自由乘车上遭遇歧视的决心，到他年轻时在埃德蒙·佩图斯桥(Edmund Pettus Bridge)直面暴力和死亡时表现出的勇气，再到他30多年来为国会带来的道德领导力。”
刘易斯于1940年2月21日出生于阿拉巴马州特洛伊市的佃农家庭，他就读于种族隔离的公立学校，他认为蒙哥马利巴士抵制运动和马丁·路德·金博士的电台广播是他作为活动家工作的灵感来源。
18岁时，他给金写了一封信，金的回应是为刘易斯买了一张去蒙哥马利的往返车票，这样他们就可以见面了。
“金博士，我是约翰·罗伯特·刘易斯，”他回忆说。“这就是开始。”
刘易斯抓紧时间组织起来，很快发现自己站在了民权运动的第一线。
作为菲斯克大学的学生，他在纳什维尔领导了许多反对种族隔离的示威活动，包括在隔离的午餐柜台静坐示威纳什维尔静坐示威。
从1961年开始，他参加了一系列被称为“自由乘车”的示威活动，在这些活动中，他和其他活动人士——黑人和白人——一起乘坐公共汽车穿越南部，挑战该地区没有执行最高法院的裁决，该裁决认为隔离公共汽车乘车违反宪法。停车后，这些游乐设施上的活动分子经常被逮捕或殴打，包括刘易斯。
就在10天前，刘易斯在他的倒数第二条推特上发布了他出狱59周年的消息，他在密西西比州的杰克逊因在自由之旅中使用白色厕所而被捕。
59年前的今天，我因在1961年的自由之旅中使用所谓的“白色”厕所而在密西西比州杰克逊被捕，随后从帕尔克曼农场监狱被释放。pic.twitter.com/OUfgeaNDOm
——约翰·刘易斯(@repjohnlewis)2020年7月7日
据《史密森尼杂志》报道，刘易斯在南卡罗来纳州的罗克希尔停留期间，遭到两名男子的袭击，他们打了他的脸，踢了他的肋骨。在几十年后的一次采访中，他说他没有被吓倒。
他说:“我们知道我们的生命可能受到威胁，但我们已经下定决心不回头。”
他是1963年华盛顿游行上最年轻的发言人，那次游行是他作为学生非暴力协调委员会主席帮助组织的。集会上，金发表了著名的“我有一个梦想”演讲，吸引了20多万与会者。
在1965年的冬天，在一个后来被称为血腥星期天刘易斯说:“路易斯和民权运动领袖何西阿·威廉姆斯一起，带领数百名示威者游行，争取从塞尔玛到蒙哥马利的投票权，他们受到阿拉巴马州警察的‘蓝色海洋’的迎接。”警察在命令示威者散开后，对他们进行殴打并使用催泪瓦斯。
其中一名士兵打碎了刘易斯的头骨，给他的后半生留下了伤疤。
在这张1965年3月7日的档案照片中，在阿拉巴马州塞尔玛，州警挥舞着比利俱乐部驱散民权投票游行。前景中的学生非暴力协调委员会主席约翰·刘易斯被一名州警殴打。未来的美国国会议员刘易斯颅骨骨折。美联社照片，文件
“我以为我看到了死亡，”刘易斯说后来说。
从那以后，刘易斯几乎每年都追溯那一天发生的事情，这就是众所周知的阿拉巴马民权朝圣。
刘易斯在1981年当选亚特兰大市议会议员，然后在1986年当选代表佐治亚州第五区的国会议员。他曾在方法和手段委员会任职，是监督小组委员会的负责人。
“这个世界已经失去了一个传说;民权运动失去了一个偶像，亚特兰大市失去了一位最无畏的领导人，国会黑人核心小组失去了我们任期最长的成员。”“国会黑人核心小组被称为国会的良心。约翰·刘易斯被认为是我们核心小组的良心。刘易斯一直是正义的斗士，他最近参观了位于华盛顿州DC的黑人生活物质广场。他的出现鼓励了新一代的积极分子“大声疾呼”并陷入“麻烦之中”，继续朝着正义和自由的方向努力。”
作为一名出版作家，刘易斯与人合著了一部关于民权运动的图文小说三部曲《三月》，该项目获得了国家图书奖等奖项。
在这张2019年10月24日的档案照片中，民主党众议员约翰·刘易斯。，准备向马里兰州众议员以利亚·卡明斯致敬，他在华盛顿美国国会山的追悼会上躺在州内。梅丽娜·玛拉/华盛顿邮报，美联社，普尔，档案
刘易斯在批评唐纳德·特朗普总统时从不害羞，跳过他的就职典礼和第一次国情咨文演说，称他为“种族主义者”2018年1月的采访在“本周与乔治斯特凡诺普洛斯。”
“乔治，我不认为你可以用马丁·路德·金的话来反驳总统所说的话，”这位佐治亚州的国会议员说，这是对特朗普所谓的不想要来自“s - hole”国家的移民的回应。“这是不可能的...难以置信。这让我很难过。它让我哭泣。”
2011年，巴拉克·奥巴马总统授予刘易斯总统自由勋章，以表彰他一生的倡导和行动。
在此期间二月仪式奥巴马在谈到刘易斯时说:“从现在起的几代人，当父母教导他们的孩子什么是勇气时，约翰·刘易斯的故事就会浮现在脑海里——一个知道变革不能等待别人或其他时间的美国人;他的生活是一个教训的激烈的紧迫性现在。”
木兰花影业公司发布的这张照片显示了众议员约翰·刘易斯在“约翰·刘易斯:好麻烦。”本·阿农/木兰照片
上个月，在与奥巴马讨论乔治·弗洛伊德去世后全国各地的种族抗议的市政厅，他在民权运动期间进行抗议时，反思了自己的情绪。
“我在桥上被打了，我以为我已经死了。我以为我要死了。”
他补充说:“我相信这是上帝的恩典，祈祷证人帮助拯救了我，所以今天我感到非常幸运，非常幸运地看到正在发生的变化，活着看到一个年轻人，一个像巴拉克·奥巴马这样的年轻朋友，成为美国总统是值得的痛苦。”
刘易斯还赞扬了来自各行各业的年轻人聚集在一起参加抗议活动。
他说:“他们将帮助拯救美国的灵魂，拯救我们的国家，甚至拯救地球。”
John Lewis, congressman and civil rights icon, dies at 80
Rep. John Robert Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and civil rights icon, died Friday. He was 80 years old.
Lewis passed seven months after a routine medical visit revealed that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Black Caucus confirmed the news of his death.
Known as the "conscience of the U.S. Congress," Lewis continually represented Georgia's 5th Congressional District, which includes most of Atlanta, since taking office in 1987. His cancer diagnosis in December 2019 did not interrupt that streak.
"So I have decided to do what I know to do and do what I have always done: I am going to fight it and keep fighting for the Beloved Community. We still have many bridges to cross," he said in astatementat the time.
"John Lewis was a titan of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and bravery transformed our nation – from the determination with which he met discrimination at lunch counters and on Freedom Rides, to the courage he showed as a young man facing down violence and death on Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the moral leadership he brought to the Congress for more than 30 years," Pelosi said in a statement.
Lewis, who was born on Feb. 21, 1940 to sharecroppers in Troy, Alabama, attended segregated public schools and counted the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s radio broadcasts as inspiration for his work as an activist.
At 18, he wrote a letter to King, who responded by purchasing a round-trip bus ticket to Montgomery for Lewis so they could meet.
"Dr. King, I am John Robert Lewis," he recalled saying to King. "And that was the beginning."
Lewis wasted no time organizing, quickly finding himself on the front lines of the civil rights movement.
As a student at Fisk University, he led numerous demonstrations in Nashville against racial segregation, including sit-ins at segregated lunch counters as part of theNashville Sit-ins.
Starting in 1961, he took part in a series of demonstrations that became known as the Freedom Rides, in which he and other activists -- Black and white -- rode together in buses through the South to challenge the region's lack of enforcing a Supreme Court ruling that deemed segregated public bus rides unconstitutional. Upon stopping, the activists on these rides often were arrested or beaten,Lewis included.
In his second-to-last tweet, just 10 days ago, Lewis tweeted about the 59th anniversary of his release from jail after being arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for using a white restroom during a Freedom Ride.
59 years ago today I was released from Parchman Farm Penitentiary after being arrested in Jackson, MS for using a so-called "white" restroom during the Freedom Rides of 1961.pic.twitter.com/OUfgeaNDOm
— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis)July 7, 2020
During a stop in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Lewis was attacked by two men who hit him in the face and kicked him in the ribs, according to Smithsonian Magazine. In an interview decades later, he said he was undeterred.
"We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back," he said.
He was the youngest person to speak at the 1963 March on Washington, an event he helped organize as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The rally, at which King famously delivered his "I Have a Dream"speech, drew more than 200,000 attendees.
And in the winter of 1965, in what would become known as "Bloody Sunday," Lewis, alongside fellow civil rights leader Hosea Williams, was in the process of leading hundreds of demonstrators in a march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery when they were greeted by a "sea of blue" of Alabama state troopers, Lewis said. The troopers beat and tear-gassed the demonstrators after ordering them to disperse.
One of those troopers fractured Lewis's skull, scarring his head for the rest of his life.
"I thought I saw death," Lewislater said.
Since then, Lewis has retraced the steps from those day's events nearly every year in what has become known as theAlabama Civil Rights Pilgrimage.
Lewis was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and then to Congress, representing Georgia's 5th District in 1986. He has served on the Ways & Means Committee and is head of the Oversight Subcommittee.
"The world has lost a legend; the civil rights movement has lost an icon, the City of Atlanta has lost one of its most fearless leaders, and the Congressional Black Caucus has lost our longest serving member," the caucus said in a statement. "The Congressional Black Caucus is known as the Conscience of the Congress. John Lewis was known as the conscience of our caucus. A fighter for justice until the end, Mr. Lewis recently visited Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington DC. His mere presence encouraged a new generation of activist to 'speak up and speak out' and get into 'good trouble' to continue bending the arc toward justice and freedom."
A published author, Lewis co-authored a graphic novel trilogy "MARCH" about the civil rights movement, a project that garnered the National Book Award among others.
Lewis was never shy in his criticism of President Donald Trump, skipping his inauguration and first State of the Union address and calling him a "racist" ina January 2018 interviewon "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
"George, I don't think there's any way that you can square what the president said with the words of Martin Luther King Jr.," the Georgia congressman said, in reaction to Trump's alleged reference to not wanting immigrants from "s--hole" countries. "It's just impossible ... It's unbelievable. It makes me sad. It makes me cry.”
President Barack Obama awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 for his lifetime of advocacy and activism.
During thatFebruary ceremony, Obama said of Lewis: "And generations from now, when parents teach their children what is meant by courage, the story of John Lewis will come to mind -- an American who knew that change could not wait for some other person or some other time; whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now."
Last month, at a town hall with Obama discussing the racial protests across the country following the death of George Floyd, he reflected on his emotions while protesting during the civil rights movement.
"I have been beaten on the bridge, I thought I was so dead. I thought I was going to die,” Lewis said.
"I believe it was the grace of God, and praying witnesses that helped save me, so today I feel more than lucky, more than blessed to see the changes that are occurring to live to see a young man, a young friend like Barack Obama, become president of the United States of America was worth the pain," he added.
Lewis also offered praise for young people who had come together from all walks of life to join in protests.
"They're going to help redeem the soul of America, and save our country, and maybe even save the planet," he said.
