R.I.P. | John Lewis, 1940-2020

Rep. John Lewis receiving the President's
Medal of Freedom, 2010.

The following appreciation of Rep. John Lewis is from guest blogger Doug Clemmons, a Baltimore-based attorney who wrote earlier about a life-changing meeting with the late Elijah M. Cummings. 

The late Honorable John Lewis was a living American hero for his entire adult life.

He is worthy of the praise you would give someone injured on the field of battle fighting for the freedom of Americans—even those who never knew on a personal level the soldier’s sacrifice or name.

Fortunately I had the opportunity to serve, and learn from, a Congressman that provided me the freedom to attend many hearings and events where Lewis was a speaker. John Lewis was close to (and looked like) the late Congressman Elijah Cummings, another wonderful leader I had the great privilege to meet and was not always properly recognized, but was always there for his constituents.

These two Congressmen shared a trait I would describe as an aura. You knew if you were wrong, you would be in for an earnest and peaceful fight that would not end until you changed my way of thinking.

The New York Times obituary of John Lewis summarized: “Images of his beating at Selma shocked the nation and led to swift passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He was later called the conscience of the Congress.”

Doug Clemmons, Esq.

It has been a year for deaths of those who worked on behalf of their brothers. Another Atlantan and an original Freedom Rider, Reverend Cordy Tindell Vivian, affectionately known as C.T., also died this past weekend. He was 15 years older than Lewis and an 18-year veteran of the civil rights movement. He had participated in a lunch counter sit-in in 1947, when he risked his life alongside another minister, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Congressman Lewis.

I am thankful for the right to vote and I am thankful for the contributions of all the Black leaders to the cause of freedom and equality. In times like these I have special reason to be grateful for their legacies and the courage they showed in building them.