R.I.P. John Robert Lewis
In his 2019 piece on Congressman John Lewis, David Remnick wrote that “No one, over a long lifetime, gets everything right. John Lewis has come as close as anyone.” It is no hyperbole to say that at the time of his death this week at the age of 80, Lewis was one of the great living Americans, the embodiment of everything this country claims that it is and can be. Few can claim to have grown up poor in the apartheid South, He was part of a generation that reshaped this nation. He was one of the younger figures of the Civil Rights Movement, where he was considered hotheaded and extreme. Lewis has been a pacifist his entire life, but he was a radical for peace. He was an extremist for justice. Throughout his life he never stopped believing in nonviolence, in peace, in living together. It is a religious fervor and passion that never left him, and it was easy to see the minister he once sought to be in conversations with him. He was a great man, and we are poorer in spirit for his passing.
I only met the man a few times and interviewed him twice. The last time I saw him, he hugged me and called me brother.
I spoke with him for an article about his memoir March HERE. (Also, I apologize for the formatting of the article, which makes me eyes hurt).
In 2013, at the Small Press Expo in Maryland, I spoke with the Congressman along with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell about March.
Congressman John Lewis, as drawn by Nate Powell. 2013