John Lewis, the civil rights icon who played a key role in some of the most important battles of the era and went on to serve more than 30 years as an unwavering progressive congressman from Georgia, died Friday following a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 80.
Lewis was the last surviving member of the “Big Six,” the group of prominent Black civil rights leaders who helped organize the 1963 March on Washington. The others were Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young.
Born in Troy, Alabama, in 1940 to parents who were sharecroppers, Lewis became active in the civil rights movement while in college in Tennessee, organizing demonstrations to protest segregation throughout Nashville.