http://johnlewis.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=31
The Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi has called Rep. Lewis "the conscience of the U.S. Congress." And Roll Call magazine has said, "John Lewis...is a genuine American hero and moral leader who commands widespread respect in the chamber."
He was born the son of sharecroppers on February 21, 1940, outside of Troy, Alabama. He grew up on his family's farm and attended segregated public schools in Pike County, Alabama. As a young boy, he was inspired by the activism surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which he heard on radio broadcasts. In those pivotal moments, he made a decision to become a part of the Civil Rights Movement. Ever since then, he has remained at the vanguard of progressive social movements and the human rights struggle in the United States.
http://nation.foxnews.com/occupy-wall-street/2011/10/10/occupy-atlanta-silences-civil-rights-hero-john-lewis'Occupy Atlanta' Silences Civil Rights Hero John Lewis
A stunned Lewis could be seen watching the whole thing unfold before ambling away.
The procedures they used -- rather, invented -- would make the Senate blush. Imagine some combination of Model U.N., Lord of the Flies and a Phish concert.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/10/10/2011-10-10_occupy_atlanta_offshoot_of_wall_street_protest_denies_rep_john_lewis_chance_to_s.html?r=news/nationalHe may have been a leader in the Civil Rights movement, but Georgia Congressman John Lewis was not welcome to speak at the Occupy Atlanta protest.
Now the movement is receiving notice across the country for all the wrong reasons.
Lewis seemed the least perturbed by the incident and said he just wanted to support the group. He is seen respectfully leaving the protest after they denied him a chance to speak.
"I was going to say, I stand with you," Lewis told CBS Atlanta after the incident. "I support you, what you're doing."
Occupy Atlanta Silences Civil Rights Hero John Lewis!http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/228310/20111010/occupy-atlanta-protesters-john-lewis-civil-rights-dissing-congressman.htmIn the clip, "Occupy Atlanta" protestors who began setting up camp in Atlanta's Woodruff Park, discuss the matter by repeating phrases, vote by waving their hands and ultimately decide that Lewis, a Civil Rights Era icon, should not speak after stumbling upon the four-day-old protest.
The leaderless group of protesters mimics the "Occupy Wall Street" protests going on in New York City, in an attempt to fight against corporate greed.
According to reports, on Monday the group apologized to the people in the crowd who were offended for, "dissing," or not allowing Congressman Lewis to speak during its Friday meeting.
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/lew0bio-1As a student he made a systematic study of the techniques and philosophy of nonviolence, and with his fellow students prepared thoroughly for their first actions. They began with sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. Day after day, Lewis and his fellow students sat silently at lunch counters where they were harassed, spit upon, beaten and finally arrested and held in jail, but they persisted in the sit-ins. In 1961, Lewis joined fellow students on the Freedom Rides, challenging the segregation of interstate buses. In the Montgomery bus terminal he was again attacked by a mob and brutally beaten.
Lewis was one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and served as its president from 1963 to 1966, when SNCC was at the forefront of the student movement for Civil Rights. By 1963, he was recognized as one of the "Big Six" leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, along with Dr. King, Whitney Young, A. Phillip Randolph, James Farmer and Roy Wilkins. He was one of the planners and keynote speakers of the March on Washington in August 1963, the occasion of Dr. King's celebrated "I Have a Dream" speech.
In 1964, Lewis coordinated SNCC's efforts for "Mississippi Freedom Summer," a campaign to register black voters across the South. The following year, Lewis led one of the most dramatic protests of the era. On March 7, 1965 -- a day that would become known as "Bloody Sunday" -- Lewis and fellow activist Hosea Williams led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. At the end of the bridge, they were met by Alabama State Troopers, who ordered them to disperse. When the marchers stopped to pray, the police discharged tear gas and mounted troopers charged the demonstrators, beating them with night sticks. Lewis's skull was fractured, but he escaped across the bridge, to a church in Selma. Before he could be taken to the hospital, John Lewis appeared before the television cameras calling on President Johnson to intervene in Alabama.
