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House Lawmakers Hold Moment of Silence for Civil Rights Icon John Lewis

VOA News

   Members of the U.S. House of Representatives held a moment of silence
   Monday in honor of Georgia congressman and civil rights leader John
   Lewis, who died last week at age 80.

   The veteran lawmaker and son of sharecroppers was heavily involved in
   the 1960s civil rights movement, from speaking at the monumental 1963
   March on Washington, to marching in his native Alabama in 1965. During
   a Selma-to-Montgomery march that year, Lewis was beaten badly as he and
   other protesters attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge to get to
   the state capital. Lewis suffered a fractured skull during the
   confrontation with state troopers. The violence came to be known as
   "Bloody Sunday."

   According to a bio about [1]Lewis on House.gov, "news broadcasts and
   photographs revealing the senseless cruelty of the segregated South
   helped hasten the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965."

   In the wake of Lewis' death, there are calls to rename the bridge after
   Lewis. Edmund Pettus was a Confederate general and a Ku Klux Klan
   leader in Alabama.

References

   1. https://johnlewis.house.gov/john-lewis

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