John Lewis.

On a farm in Pike County, Alabama, a young John Lewis listened to Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio during the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. That moment set him on a path to the ministry and activism. He enrolled at American Baptist College in Nashville, where he joined the Nashville sit-ins and learned nonviolent protest tactics from James Lawson. Lewis graduated with a theology degree in 1961 and later earned a degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University in 1963.

In 1961, John Lewis became one of the original Freedom Riders, enduring a firebombed bus in Anniston, Alabama, and brutal beatings. He was elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC in 1963, and at age 23, he was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington later that year. On March 7, 1965, Lewis led marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where state troopers fractured his skull on what became known as Bloody Sunday. He served on the Atlanta City Council from 1981 to 1986, then represented Georgia’s 5th district in the U.S. House from 1987 until his death. Lewis introduced bills to create the National Museum of African American History and Culture for 15 years, finally succeeding in 2003. He also co-authored the graphic novel trilogy March, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2016.

John Lewis married Lillian Miles in December 1968, and they adopted their son, John-Miles Lewis, in 1976. Lillian passed away in 2012 after nearly 50 years of marriage. Lewis’s son became a hip-hop artist, and John supported his career as a way to educate his generation. Lewis also suffered from a lifelong fear of thunder and lightning astraphobia. He was close friends with Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama, and C.T. Vivian.

John Lewis’s relentless fight for justice earned him the title conscience of the Congress. In 2015, President Barack Obama spoke at the 50th anniversary of the Selma march, referencing Lewis’s knapsack packed with an apple, a toothbrush, and a book on government. Lewis’s book March won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2016. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 and the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for Lifetime Achievement. Over 45 arrests for nonviolent protest, including five while in Congress, earned him the phrase good trouble. His last public appearance was at a Black Lives Matter mural in Washington, D.C., a week before his death.