John Lewis

John Lewis was an American civil rights leader and member of Congress. He lived from 1940 to 2020. He spent his life working to end racial segregation and to protect the right to vote. He was beaten, arrested, and nearly killed for that work. Many people called him "the conscience of Congress."

Lewis was born in 1940 on a small farm near Troy, Alabama. His parents were sharecroppers, which meant they farmed land owned by someone else. As a boy, he had to attend separate schools for Black children. The schools were poorer and more crowded than the schools for white children. This was the world of Jim Crow laws, a set of rules across the South that kept Black and white people apart.

As a teenager, Lewis heard a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio. He decided to join the fight against segregation. While in college in Nashville, Lewis trained in nonviolent protest. He learned how to stay calm even when people screamed at him, threw food at him, or hit him.

In 1961, Lewis became one of the original Freedom Riders. These were Black and white activists who rode buses together through the South to challenge segregated bus stations. A mob beat Lewis bloody at a station in Alabama. He kept going.

By 1963, Lewis was leading a major civil rights group called SNCC. He was only 23 when he spoke at the March on Washington, the same day King gave the "I Have a Dream" speech. Lewis was the youngest speaker that day.

His most famous moment came on March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama. Lewis helped lead about 600 people across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to march for voting rights. State troopers attacked the marchers with clubs and tear gas. A trooper fractured Lewis's skull. Television cameras showed the violence to the whole country. The day became known as "Bloody Sunday." Just five months later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important laws in American history.

Lewis later went into politics. In 1986, voters in Atlanta elected him to the U.S. House of Representatives. He served there for more than 33 years, until his death from cancer in 2020. He kept fighting for voting rights, healthcare, and gun safety.

Lewis often told young people to make "good trouble." He meant the kind of trouble that comes from standing up against unfair rules. He was arrested more than 40 times in his life, and he said he would do it all again.