JOHN LEWIS (POLITICIAN)

'John Robert Lewis' (born February 21, 1940) is an American politician and was an important leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and played a key role in the struggle to end segregation. Lewis, a member of the Democratic Party, has represented Georgia's 5th Congressional District (map) in the United States House of Representatives since 1987. The district encompasses almost all of Atlanta.

Contents

Early life and activism

Political career

References

Quotes

External links

Early life and activism

Born in Troy, Alabama, the son of sharecroppers, Lewis was educated at the American Baptist Theological Seminary and at Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tennessee, where he became active in the local sit-in movement. He participated in the Freedom Rides to desegregate the South, and was a national leader in the struggle for civil rights. Lewis became nationally known after his prominent role on the Selma to Montgomery marches, when police beat the nonviolently marching Lewis mercilessly in public, leaving head wounds that are still visible today.
Of John Lewis, the historian Howard Zinn wrote: "At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), John Lewis, speaking to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King's ''I Have a Dream,'' (speech) was prepared to ask the right question: 'Which side is the federal government on?' That sentence was eliminated from his speech by organizers of the March to avoid offending the Kennedy Administration. But Lewis and his fellow SNCC workers had experienced, again and again, the strange passivity of the national government in the face of Southern violence." [1]

"John Lewis and SNCC had reason to be angry. John had been beaten bloody by a white mob in Montgomery as a Freedom Rider in the spring of 1961. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but done nothing itself except to have FBI agents take notes. Instead of insisting that blacks and whites had a right to ride the buses together, the Kennedy Administration called for a 'cooling-off period,' a moratorium on Freedom Rides. [2]
"The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events—some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled."[3]

On October 5, 1963, Zinn began an article called "The Battle-Scarred Youngsters" in ''The Nation'' in this way:

Standing at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, John Lewis turned his wrath, not at the easy target, the Dixiecrats, but against the Administration...
To many, the March had been presented as a gigantic lobby for the Administration's Civil Rights Bill, but Lewis pointed quickly, unerringly, to the weaknesses in the bill. Furthermore, by sponsoring a new civil-rights bill, the Administration had skillfully turned attention to Congress, and deflected the erratic spotlight of the civil-rights movement from possibly focusing on inadequacies of the Executive.
The straight, crass fact at which John Lewis was aiming is this: the national government, without any new legislation, has the power to protect Negro voters and demonstrators from policemen's clubs, hoses and jails—and it has not used that power.

The full article was later reprinted in ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1963–1973.''
[4]
After leaving SNCC in 1966, Lewis worked with community organizations and was named community affairs director for the National Consumer Co-op Bank in Atlanta.

Political career

Lewis first ran for elective office in 1977, when a vacancy occurred in Georgia's 5th District. A special election was called after President Jimmy Carter appointed incumbent Congressman Andrew Young to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Lewis lost the race to Atlanta City Councilman Wyche Fowler. In 1981, Lewis was himself elected to the Atlanta City Council.
In 1986, when Fowler ran for the United States Senate, Lewis defeated fellow civil rights leader Julian Bond in the Democratic primary to succeed Fowler in the 5th District. This win was tantamount to election in the heavily Democratic, majority-black 5th District. Lewis was the second African-American to represent Georgia in Congress since Reconstruction. Young was the first. Lewis has been re-elected nine times without serious opposition, often with over 70 percent of the vote. He has been unopposed for reelection since 2002.
Since 1991, Lewis has been senior chief deputy whip in the Democratic caucus. He is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc..
Lewis is, according to the Associated Press, "the first major House figure to suggest impeaching George W. Bush," arguing that the president "deliberately, systematically violated the law" in authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct wiretaps without a warrant. Lewis said: "He is not King, he is president."[5]
For many years, he has served on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is the chairman of its Subcommittee on Oversight.
Lewis, an outspoken progressive and staunch opponent of the Iraq War, endorsed Joe Lieberman for re-election to the Senate in 2006, despite Lieberman's loss to Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary.[6]
He was one of the 31 who voted in the House to not count the electoral votes from Ohio in the United States presidential election, 2004. [7]

References

★ ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1963–1973'' (Library of America: 2003) ISBN 1-931082-29-4

★ ''Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement'' by John Lewis with Michael D'Orso, (Harvest Books: 1999) ISBN 0-15-600708-8. The U.S. Congressman tells of life in the trenches of the Civil Rights movement, the numerous arrests, sit-ins, and marches that led to breaking down the barriers of discrimination in the South during the 1950s and 1960s.

★ ''John Lewis in the Lead: A Story of the Civil Rights Movement'' by Jim Haskins and Kathleen Benson, illustrated by Benny Andrews, (Lee & Low Books: 2006) ISBN 978-1-58430-250-6. A biography of John Lewis, one of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders of the 1960s, focusing on his involvement in Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, and the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

Quotes

★ "I thought I was going to die a few times. On the Freedom Ride in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7th, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a State Trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death, but nothing can make me question the philosophy of nonviolence."

★ "I believe in nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living."

★ "War does not end strife — it sows it. War does not end hatred — it feeds it. For those who argue war is a necessary evil, I say you are half right. War is evil. But it is not necessary. War cannot be a necessary evil, because non-violence is a necessary good. The two cannot co-exist."

★ "On November 7th (2006) we face the most dangerous situation we ever have. If you think fighting off dogs and water hoses in the 60's was bad, imagine if we sit idly by and let the right wing Republicans take control of the Fulton County commission. Unless you want them to turn back the clock on equal rights, human rights, economic freedom for all vote for John Eaves as Fulton County chairman. Your very life may depend on it."

External links

★ U.S. Congressman John Lewis 'official House site'

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★ Federal Election Commission — Mr. John Lewis campaign finance reports and data

★ On the Issues — John Lewis issue positions and quotes

★ OpenSecrets.org — John Lewis campaign contributions

★ Project Vote Smart — Representative John R. Lewis (GA) profile

★ SourceWatch Congresspedia — John Lewis profile

★ Washington Post — Congress Votes Database: John Lewis voting record

★ John Lewis for Congress 'official campaign site'