Atlanta mourns the late US civil rights activist John Lewis. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ordered the flags in the city to be lowered to half mast until further notice. Democrat Lewis had represented the 5th district of Georgia, which includes much of the city of Atlanta, in Congress for more than 30 years.
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Words could not describe the loss of Lewis, it said Bottoms explanation. She praised him as a politician who cared for the population: “The people of Atlanta have often asked Congressman Lewis for advice, support, and help,” she wrote. “No matter how busy his schedule or how important his duties were in Washington, he replied.”
Protest marches with Martin Luther King
Arthur Falcons, owner of the Atlanta Falcons football team, also commented on Lewis’s death: “John risked his life to end legal segregation and make America a better place for us and future generations,” said 77 -Year old. “It’s the legacy of one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.”
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In his obituary, Barack Obama, the only black president in the country’s history, recalled how much Lewis had shaped his own life. When he first met as a student, he called him “his hero”.
Lewis was a speaker at the legendary March on Washington in 1963, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his world-famous “I have a Dream” speech in 1963. Together with King, he organized the protest marches from Selma to Montgomery, which marked the political high point of the civil rights movement.
On the day of the first march in March 1965, which went down in history as “Bloody Sunday”, Lewis was brutally beaten by a police officer on a bridge and suffered a broken skull. “I thought I was going to die,” Lewis often recalled later. There is now a petition to name the bridge after him.
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Blank also pointed out that the city had also lost another civil rights icon: Cordy Tindell Vivian, a friend and supporter of Martin Luther King, also died on Friday. He was 95 years old. Lewis died on Friday after a serious illness at the age of 80.
In a statement, Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp described Lewis as “an American hero, civil rights icon, freedom fighter and loved one from Georgia”. He ordered the flags on state buildings to be hoisted at half-mast by the day of Lewis’ funeral.
President’s critic
Kemp must now run a special election to fill Lewis’s place in Congress during the current term. Regardless, the Democrats can nominate a replacement candidate to fill Lewis’s place in the November election because he had already won the candidacy for another term.
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Donald Trump said in a short tweet about Lewis’s death and also announced the lowering of the flags to half mast – but only for the rest of Saturday. Lewis was a vehement critic of the US president.
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