John Robert "Bob" Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American activist and politician. From 1987 until his death in 2020, he represented the State of Georgia in the United States House of Represenativies.
Lewis came of age just as the Civil Rights Movement was getting underway, and was inspired by stories he read about the increasingly-notorious Martin Luther King Jr. to become a minister and nonviolent activist. To this end, he attended the American Baptist Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, where he became one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), soon to be one of the most influential civil rights organizations in the country. As a co-founder SNCC, he helped to organize the Freedom Rides, a nonviolent protest where 13 students would ride a non-segregated bus through the segregated South to draw attention to unjust Jim Crow laws. The violence Lewis endured at the hands of vigilante mobs and the police quickly became national news, and Lewis' mugshot from his arrest in Jackson, Mississippi, depicting him smirking defiantly at his captors, has become an iconic piece of Americana.
This act made Lewis a hero to the Civil Rights Movement, his courage in the face of extreme violence led to being compared favorably to Martin Luther King himself, who had refused to participate.note Soon after, he became Chairman of SNCC and one of the six de facto leaders of the movement itself. Lewis was chosen to speak at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the venue where King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech was delivered. Lewis would go on to be one of the lead organizers of Freedom Summer in Mississippi, leading voter registration drives, as well as one of the leaders of the Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights. Disagreements over SNCC's structure and ideology would force him to step down as Chairman in 1966.
In 1986, after a long career heading various civil rights initiatives and 5 years as a city councilman for the city of Atlanta, Lewis was elected to the United States House of Representatives, beating out fellow Civil Rights Movement alumnus Julian Bond in a bitter and hotly contested race. His victory coming after a decades-long battle to secure his people the right to vote was considered deeply symbolic of American progress. Lewis drew heavily on his career as an activist as a politician as well, even getting arrested several times while sitting in Congress during protests against Apartheid and US immigration policy.
John Lewis died on July 17, 2020 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was the last living of the six speakers of the March on Washington.
Lewis is featured in Selma, a dramatization of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, where he is played by Stephan James. A series of graphic novels depicting his life have been published, simply titled March.
