John Lewis, the civil rights hero and U.S. congressman, has died at the age of 80, having suffered from pancreatic cancer.
In his younger years, Lewis helped Martin Luther King organize the March on Washington in 1963 and once suffered a broken skull at the hands of state troopers.
Born to sharecroppers in Troy, Alabama in February 1940, Lewis became a prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. He joined the Freedom Rides that began in 1961, traveling to the segregated south by bus to fight segregation on interstate buses.
A founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he became its chair in 1963. Lewis was elected congressman for Georgia’s fifth district in 1987 and held the office until his death.
When he attended President Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, he was the last surviving speaker from the March on Washington. President Obama presented Lewis with a commemorative photograph signed “Because of you, John. Barack Obama.” In 2011 he awarded Lewis the presidential medal of freedom.
