John Lewis: 'Conscience' with clout

John Lewis: 'Conscience' with clout

By BOB KEMPER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/21/06


Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) is arrested Tuesday at the Sudanese
Embassy in Washington while protesting conditions in Darfur. His
arrests, more than 40 over his 66 years, have only burnished his image.


Washington — Rep. John Lewis strode down the sidewalk wearing a gray pinstriped suit and blue dress shirt open at the neck. "They don't like for you to wear a tie," he said. By "they" he meant the police who were waiting to arrest him.

No one in Congress today is more familiar with arrest etiquette than Lewis, the civil rights leader who has been jailed more than 40 times in his 66 years, most recently Tuesday for protesting in front of the Sudanese Embassy over the widespread violence and starvation in Darfur.

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"John Lewis is an American icon. He transcends partisan politics," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an advocacy group. "His integrity is beyond question and every member of Congress, regardless of party, knows that."

Lewis, who is a fierce partisan critic of President Bush and the war in Iraq, is also pragmatic about the clout his stature allows him to wield. "He's one of Congress' most effective and powerful politicians," Henderson said.

...snip

Lewis now is pushing colleagues to create a special "cold case" unit in the Justice Department and FBI to investigate unsolved slayings from the civil rights era. And he is leading the fight to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a law originally prompted by the beating Lewis endured at the hands of the police in Selma, Ala., that same year.


More: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/0521lewis.html

As a young man, Lewis said, the idea of serving in Congress was "thinking the unthinkable." He had no ambition to work within the Establishment he'd been railing against and which, in his youth, wouldn't allow him to tour the capitol in his home state of Alabama, let alone serve in it.

"Some people say if you're outside, you speak with a greater sense of moral authority," Lewis said. "But in my position, because of my history, I just think I bring something different to American politics.

"I don't think it's changed me ," he said. "I use the same language ... and my core beliefs are the same."

Top Republicans — including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois — have publicly lauded Lewis, often ranked as having the 10th-most liberal voting record in Congress. Lewis also has forged strong ties to other members, like Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and former Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who once actively opposed equal rights for blacks.