Congressman Lewis was a true champion for change. He battled and sacrificed for black people to have the right to vote.
As one of the original Freedom Riders, he suffered a fractured skull at the hands of the Alabama State Troopers on Bloody Sunday on that bridge at Selma. He was the youngest speaker to speak with Martin Luther King Jr from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the 1963 March on Washington where the latter gave the famous, “I Have A Dream” speech. Mr Lewis was one of America’s famous civil rights leaders and was dubbed the ‘conscience of the Congress’. He represented Georgia State for 33 years.
I was privileged to meet Congressman John Lewis five years ago in Washington DC- at the Embassy of Haiti specifically, where he was invited to come to share his experience and insights on issues confronting the globe. Meeting this enigma for me was one of the most poignant and surreal moments of my life. It was akin to taking a ride on a time machine.
He spoke to my soul every time he used the phrase ‘good trouble.’ Mr Lewis after hearing MLK Jr. on the radio said, “I would ask my mother and my father and my grandparents, my great grandparents, ‘Why?’ And they would say, ‘That’s the way it is. Don’t get in the way. Don’t get in trouble.”‘ As he recalled in a 2015 speech, “The action of Rosa Parks and the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired me to find a way to get in the way, to get in trouble – good trouble, necessary trouble.
Congressman Lewis through his life’s work has helped bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice.As
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