John Lewis (1940–2020) was a prominent American civil rights leader and politician. One of his most prominent early roles was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Lewis played a key role in the 1963 March on Washington and was one of the “Big Six” leaders of the movement. Two years later he led a march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, which was violently suppressed by law enforcement on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The event became known as “Bloody Sunday” and galvanized support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
After his time with the SNCC, Lewis continued his activism, directing the Voter Education Project. He later entered politics, serving as an Atlanta city councilman (1982–86) before becoming a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1987–2020). Lewis died on July 17, 2020, at the age of 80. Called the “conscience of Congress,” he became the first African American lawmaker to lie in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.