John Lewis died of cancer at the age of 80. As a young man, he offered his services to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and worked alongside him in the critical and most dangerous moments of the civil rights movement. Only 23, he spoke at the historic March on Washington in 1963. He was elected to Congress in 1987, where he served until his last day.
He led a life of courage, principle, and honor.
John Lewis is an American hero, a man who advanced the cause of democracy, freedom, and equality. These are our core American ideals, and the only monuments that should be erected should recognize those who stood for them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great post, Diane. Yes. Monuments to the likes of this great man.
Someone on Twitter suggested renaming the Edmond Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for him, the site where he was savagely beaten many years ago.
What a superb idea!
John Lewis is truly a hero of mine. His loss deeply saddens me. Go with God, Congessman Lewis.
Yesterday we also saw the passing of CT Vivian, a fixture in Nashville during the Civil Rights era. He was 95. This generation has already given way to the next. We live in a time when the third generation is defining the struggle for human equality.
I think we often misunderstand the movement toward human equality. we do this because the perception we have of our grandfathers is that they were somehow more civilized than other people’s grandfathers. We see the civilized Europeans bringing ideas to an uncivilized world. This is in error. Civilization is a process by which we all incorporate ideas we learn. Part of that process included the enlightenment, with its seemingly civilized populations of intellectuals discussing new ideas. While this is a really important part of history, we should not assume that the people who attended the Salons of Paris saw other people as human. Their writings suggest that they viewed other cultures as essentially inferior, and struggled with that problem, creating stereotypes like the noble savage to take the place of the animal view of the non-European.
On the American and Austrailian frontier, Europeans decidedly viewed the natives as non-human. Aussies hunted aboriginals. The European invaders moved the natural inhabitants of the land around in ways that were as destructive as the biological diseases that made it possible for them to exploit the continent for its natural wealth. All of this was based on the concept that the “other” people were not people. Without this belief, all the outrages we have studied in history would not have been possible.
We should not have ever viewed our ancestry as so civilized. They were not so much more civilized than Red Cloud or Washikie. It may seem horrifying to us that the latter cut out the heart of his vanquished foe out of respect for the man (The Crow, Big Robber), but it is no worse than some of the things Europeans have done to their own kind, from Waterloo to the factories of Manchester or the mines of Pennsylvania.
Men like John Lewis and CT Vivian ask us to look at ourselves and ask where we fall in the spectrum of civilization. They challenge us to see all creation as valuable, especially the human part of creation. The ask us to consider the possibility that we are not yet civilized. When we read that Abraham Lincoln did not see Africans as equal in the family of humanity, we should not be aghast. We should not go after his monument. Rather, we should erect monuments to the men like Lewis and Vivian who exemplify what we want to be, what we aspire to. Someday, citizens may question our heroes. We may be seem to lack some basic understanding of humanity they take as a postulate. We may deserve it. But the one standard of goodness that seems unchanged over the eons is that the lessons of redemption does not waver. When we offer redemption, we plant ourselves firmly in the current that flows toward goodness. RIP CT Vivian and John Lewis.
For those of you with young children or grandchildren, get them John Lewis’s graphic trilogy March. His was the last great human being, unconditionally, who was left in this country.
When I worked in the Senate in the early 90s, for the first six months I lived in Maryland and would commute on the same Metro, same time every day, and exit at the Capitol South station to walk across the Hill to the Senate office building. Virtually every day, I would cross paths with John Lewis and it become a routine for me to say, “Good morning, Congressman” and he would always reply “And good morning to you!” After I moved to the Hill, that didn’t happen anymore. A few years later when I passed him in the corridor of one of the House office buildings our eyes met, he stopped and asked me, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” I reminded him of our short, daily encounters and he said, “Of course! So what are you up to now?” During the course of our short conversation, I told him how much it meant to me just to exchange greetings with him because I had read Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters and how much I admired him. He said, “Well, Taylor made me sound a whole lot more important than I was. It was a movement and I was just a small part of it.” With that we parted. I’m truly heartbroken.
At 16 he was on a path to greatness. I pray that some young leaders in this generation will have his courage and wisdom in seeking justice. The first-person video brought tears of sorrow and appreciation.
John Lewis was a figure of courage and strength who will truly be missed.
Currently, the 97 minute documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble can be seen on OnDemand (should you have it). It would behoove all of us to share it with our young family members & others: a hero they should know about & a history lesson for all.
Many condolences to the Lewis family. May his memory be a blessing.
Watching Edmund Pettus’s great-great-granddaughter on MSNBC now, decided to look her up. She’s 32, very persuasive, a teacher of writing at Vanderbilt and a two year alum of TFA. Perhaps Naomi Rooks wants to feature her in the reprint of her book. Would be interesting what she thinks about public education and what she would say about TFA.