The late civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman John Lewis was honored in a service Saturday in the rural Alabama county where his story began. The 'troubles that he got himself into would change the world,” his brother said.
TROY, Ala. — Civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman John Lewis was remembered Saturday — in the rural Alabama county where his story began — as a humble man who sprang from his family’s farm with a vision that “good trouble” could change the world.
At the Troy University service, his brothers and sisters recalled Lewis — who was called Robert at home — as a boy who practiced preaching and singing gospel songs to the farm animals. His brother said on the day Lewis was sworn in to Congress that they exchanged a thumbs up. He later asked Lewis what he was thinking when they did.
At his 1958 meeting with King, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and civil rights lawyer Fred Gray, Lewis talked about the possibility of a lawsuit to try to integrate the university at Troy, Gray recently recalled. The lawsuit ultimately did not happen because of concerns about retaliation his parents would face in the majority-white county.
In 1955, he heard a new voice on the radio: King, who was leading the Montgomery bus boycott about 50 miles away.
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