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Thread: John Lewis dead at 80, civil rights icon, congressman for 33 years

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    John Lewis dead at 80, civil rights icon, congressman for 33 years

    Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a former leading civil rights activist and symbol of the movement in the House of Representatives during his 33-year tenure, died Friday night.

    Doctors diagnosed Lewis with pancreatic cancer late last year. He was 80.

    Lewis, the son of Alabama sharecroppers, was already a national figure when he first entered Congress in 1987.

    The former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and one of the keynote speakers at the historic March on Washington, Lewis established himself throughout his time on Capitol Hill as a leading advocate for the rights of minorities.

    His decades of tireless activism came to a climax when then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) soared to victory in the 2008 presidential election. Lewis was the only person who spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the summer of 1963 to witness the election of the nation's first African-American president.

    "When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought — I never dreamed — of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected President of the United States," Lewis wrote shortly before the 2009 inauguration...

    John Lewis, civil rights icon, congressman for 33 years, dead at 80 | Fox News

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    He showed us how to "protest" the RIGHT way - Well done, Sir!

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