Influential civil rights leader U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., will deliver a speech on campus entitled “Non-Violence, Peace, Social Change and Justice” at 5:30 p.m. today in the EMU Ballroom.
Lewis will discuss current events and talk about the work he’s done toward justice and social change, said University Executive Assistant President Dave Hubin. He will also talk about his experiences in the Southern civil rights movement during the 1960s.
Lewis, who was an associate of Martin Luther King Jr., was the youngest speaker at the famous 1963 “March on Washington” and founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a group that staged sit-ins and voter registration drives throughout the South during the height of the civil rights movement. He also participated in the Freedom Rides.
Hubin said the Office of the President invited Lewis to the University because he has broad appeal as a speaker.
“His focus on nonviolent social change, justice and peace are themes we knew the University community and the community broadly would benefit from engaging in,” Hubin said.
In the spring of 1965, Lewis helped organize a march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., with more than 600 people. According to Lewis’ Web site, state troopers attacked the marchers, and the event became known as “Bloody Sunday.” That march and a subsequent march between Selma and Montgomery, Ala., led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Lewis was first elected to Congress in 1986 as a representative of the 5th Congressional District, which encompasses the entire city of Atlanta. For the past 17 years he’s served in that position and is now in his ninth term.
Lewis has been given numerous awards and honors for his civil rights work, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Non-Violent Peace Prize and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Spingarn Medal. He was also a recipient of the John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage Award” and the National Education Association’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award. Lewis co-authored a novel in 1998 entitled “Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.”
The free event is open to the public.
More information about Lewis can be found at http://www.house.gov/johnlewis/.