On this edition of In Black America, producer and host John L. Hanson Jr. presents a tribute to the Honorable John Robert Lewis, U.S House of Representative from Georgia’s 5th congressional district. Lewis died July 17, 2020. He was 80 years old.
Lewis chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and in 1963 he was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington. He was beaten on the Edmond Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday in 1965 as he marched for voting rights for African Americans. He represented Atlanta in the U.S. House of Representatives for more than three decades. Lewis had pivotal roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized segregation in the United States.
In Black America originally spoke with Lewis in the Spring of 2005.
