John Robert Lewis, a leader of the civil rights movement and longtime U.S. congressman from Atlanta, has died at the age of 80, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He is survived by his son, John Miles Lewis, with his wife of more than 40 years, the late Lillian Lewis, who died in 2012.
Lewis grew up as the son of sharecroppers outside of Troy, Alabama, and became inspired by civil rights icons Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks to join the nonviolent protest movement. He carried that experience into a 17-term career in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he became known as the “conscience of the Congress.”
“When I was growing up, my mother and my father, my grandparents, my great-grandparents always told us, ‘Don’t get in the way. Don’t get in trouble,’” he said in a 2006 interview with Public Broadcasting Atlanta.
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