Black inspiration figures led by Oprah Winfrey and Barrack Obama have offered their tributes from across the US society to the civil rights leader and Georgia congressman John Lewis, who died on Friday.
Lewis, who had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, dedicated his life to the fight for racial equality and justice and worked closely with Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s, the high water mark of the civil rights movement in the US.
“I first met John when I was in law school, and I told him then that he was one of my heroes. Years later, when I was elected a U.S. Senator, I told him that I stood on his shoulders,” Obama wrote in a statement following Lewis’ death.
“When I was elected President of the United States, I hugged him on the inauguration stand before I was sworn in and told him I was only there because of the sacrifices he made.”
“And through the decades, he not only gave all of himself to the cause of freedom and justice, but inspired generations that followed to try to live up to his example.”
Winfrey released footage of Lewis speaking during a recorded conversation between the two last week. “He understood and was so gracious.”
In the interview, shot to mark a CNN documentary entitled John Lewis: Good Trouble, the congressman said: “I tried to do what was right, fair and just. Necessary trouble.”
Lewis was a prominent figure in many key events of the civil rights era, prominent among them the March on Washington in 1963 and a voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 on what would come to be known as Bloody Sunday. Abrams’ organization Fair Fight continues to work to secure voting rights, a central demand of marchers in Selma.
Minister Bernice A King, the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr and Coretta Scott King, said Lewis “did, indeed, fight the good fight and get into a lot of good trouble”, thereby ensuring he “served God and humanity well”.
