Changemaker 28: John Lewis

Today's changemaker is John Robert Lewis. Born in Troy, Alabama, in 1940, Lewis was an influential activist in the Civil Rights Movement who continued to combat social injustice as a politician and civil rights activist until his passing in 2020. 

Lewis was one of the thirteen Freedom Riders in 1961 who fought racial segregation by resisting the segregating policies on interstate buses. He believed in nonviolent resistance and was arrested many times for nonviolent social justice actions. As a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lewis was elected as the Chairman of the committee in 1963 and accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. and the other changemakers on the March on Washington. In 1986, Lewis was elected to the House of Representatives from the district that includes much of Atlanta. He was the second Black Congressman to represent Georgia in Congress since reconstruction.

In 2014, Lewis visited Ireland on a civil rights pilgrimage and attended the inaugural Frederick Douglass/Daniel O’ Connell address at Iveagh House in Dublin. During his time in Ireland, Lewis traveled to Derry where he learned about Bloody Sunday before going to Belfast where he witnessed his image added to a mural with other respected figures in the fight for human rights.

In 2016, Lewis was awarded the prestigious Liberty Medal.

Photo credit: Marion S. Trikosko, U.S. News and World Reports - United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs.