French president pays tribute to 'hero' John Lewis

John Lewis, the civil rights leader who marched with Martin Luther King Jr and was nearly killed in police beatings before serving for decades as a US congressman, has died aged 80. French President Emmanuel Macron was one of several admirers to call Lewis “a hero”.

The "Sweet Auburn" neighbourhood honours figures of the civil rights movement like John Lewis © Wally Gobetz / Flickr

Lewis was an African-American icon who spent his life getting into what he liked to call "good trouble" – the confrontations necessary to improve American democracy by ending discrimination and racial injustice.

"Today, America mourns the loss of one of the greatest heroes of American history," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of the 17-term congressman from Georgia.

.@RepJohnLewis was a titan of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and bravery transformed our nation. Every day of his life was dedicated to bringing freedom and justice to all. pic.twitter.com/xMbfAUhLUv

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 18, 2020

For France's President Macron, Lewis was also a hero.

“A life fighting for civil rights. A life being part of all the good fights, battling for a fairer world,” Macron tweeted. “So much progress has been made thanks to him. John Lewis was a hero”.

A lifetime of struggle for civil rights. A lifetime of getting into “good trouble”, of fighting for a world that is more just. A true hero. Indeed, “because of you, John”. pic.twitter.com/3u7qeqtCI0

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) July 18, 2020

The photo of Macron and Lewis in a warm embrace was taken in Washington in 2018.

In another tweet the president included footage of the two men hugging and Lewis quoted as saying Macron was "fighting for the same society as the one Martin Luther King wanted”.

He fought for civil rights with Martin Luther King. Very honored to have @repjohnlewis by my side in the streets of Washington. pic.twitter.com/kBKXQ9laID

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) April 25, 2018

Brush with death

Lewis, who in late 2019 was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, was the son of sharecroppers.

He was just 21 when he became a founding member of the Freedom Riders, who fought segregation of the US transportation system in the early 1960s, eventually becoming one of the nation's most powerful voices for justice and equality.

He was the youngest leader of the 1963 March on Washington, in which King delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech.

Two years later Lewis nearly died while leading hundreds of marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on a peace march to Montgomery. State troopers, seeking to intimidate those demonstrating for voting rights for black Americans, attacked protesters.

He suffered a fractured skull on the day that would become known as "Bloody Sunday".

Fifty years later in 2015, he walked across the bridge arm in arm with Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, to mark the anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march.

Lewis first entered Congress in 1986 and quickly became a figure of moral authority, with Pelosi labelling him "the conscience of the Congress".

In recent months he had stepped away from his congressional duties as he underwent treatment for cancer.

But he returned to Washington in early June, in the midst of fiery demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, to walk in Black Lives Matter Plaza, the renamed intersection near the White House that was the site of protests against injustice.

Lewis was an early critic of Donald Trump and the first prominent Democrat to question the Republican's legitimacy.

“I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” Lewis said in an interview on NBC just a week before Trump’s inauguration in 2017. “I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they have destroyed the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.”

(with newswires)