Late John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American Statesman & Civil Rights leader who served in the US House of Representatives since 1987. Lewis is one of the most influential people to play an instrumental role in the Civil Rights Movement, which ended the Legalized Racial Segregation in the US. Here are our favorite John Lewis quotes that urge us to take the right stand, be just, and have the courage to make the world a better place.
John Lewis short quotes on determination & rights
Lewis, right, and fellow student demonstrator James Bevel stand inside the door of a Nashville, Tennessee, restaurant during a sit-in protest in 1960. The manager turned on a fumigating machine to disrupt the sit-in. Jack Corn/The Tennessean/USA Today Network
This police mug shot of Lewis was taken in Jackson, Mississippi, after he used a restroom reserved for White people during the Freedom Ride movement.Kypros/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
US President John F. Kennedy, fourth from right, meets with Lewis and other civil rights leaders after the 1963 March on Washington. Lewis is in the center, next to Martin Luther King Jr. Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images
President Barack Obama awards Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. “All these years later, (Lewis) is known as the Conscience of the United States Congress, still speaking his mind on issues of justice and equality,” Obama said. “And generations from now, when parents teach their children what is meant by courage, the story of John Lewis will come to mind — an American who knew that change could not wait for some other person or some other time; whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now.” Brooks Kraft/Corbis/Getty Images
John Lewis quotes on change, struggle & freedom
Lewis, as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, reads a document in a New York office in 1964. The document was “We Shall Overcome; the Authorized Record of the March on Washington Produced by the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership.”Robert Elfstrom/Villon Films/Getty Images
Lewis was born in Troy, Alabama, in 1940. His father, Eddie, was a sharecropper. Associated Press
Lewis walks with Martin Luther King Jr. and others during another Selma to Montgomery march later in the month. From the left are Ralph David Abernathy, James Forman, King, the Rev. Jesse Douglas, and Lewis. Steve Schapiro/Corbis via Getty Images
Lewis joins President Obama and his family on a march toward Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge on the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.”Doug Mills/The New York Times/Redux
Related: 30 Inspiring Quotes & Affirmations On Self Love
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