The ship, the first in a new class of Navy oiler vessels, was christened on the one-year anniversary of the congressman's death.
Lewis did not follow his parent’s advice. He was captivated by the ideas and work of emerging civil rights leaders, notably the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Lewis became one of the founding members of the, a racially integrated group of activists who encountered violent opposition in 1961 when it staged bus rides in the South to protest segregation at bus terminals.
And in 1965 Lewis and other protestors were beaten and injured by state troopers while trying to carry out a peaceful voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. The incident — known as “Bloody Sunday — was broadcast nationwide on TV and shocked the sensibilities of many Americans.Lewis later moved to Georgia, where he was elected to Congress in 1986, starting a long career as a lawmaker.
“He stood up, he sat in, he spoke out, he got into more than his share of very good trouble,” she added. “John did it out of a fidelity to truth and out of an unqualified respect for the people.”Some of Saturday’s speakers took a moment to wonder how Lewis, if still alive, would have reacted to the events of the last year.that a federal judge in Texas had ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is illegal.
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