John Lewis

John Robert Lewis, a Democrat, has represented the 5th District of Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1987. The district takes in almost all of Atlanta.

Iraq War
Lewis voted against the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 that started the Iraq War.

Environmental record
For more information on environmental legislation, see the Energy and Environment Policy Portal

Support for gun control
Lewis cosponsored H.R. 1312 (Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2005) on July 28, 2005.

Civil Rights Movement
Historian Howard Zinn wrote of Lewis: "At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), John Lewis, speaking to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream," was prepared to ask the right question: "Which side is the federal government on?" That sentence was eliminated from his speech by organizers of the March to avoid offending the Kennedy Administration. But Lewis and his fellow SNCC workers had experienced, again and again, the strange passivity of the national government in the face of Southern violence, strange, considering how often this same government had been willing to intervene outside the country, often with overwhelming force." 

"John Lewis and SNCC had reason to be angry. John had been beaten bloody by a white mob [on Bloody Sunday] in Montgomery as a Freedom Rider in the spring of 1961. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but done nothing itself except to have FBI agents take notes. Instead of insisting that blacks and whites had a right to ride the buses together, the Kennedy Administration called for a "cooling-off period," a moratorium on Freedom Rides." 

"The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events --some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled." 

Lewis's activism continues to this day. On the 41st anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," in March 2006, Lewis released a statement saying, "It is fitting and appropriate that we return to Selma 41 years later to help make it clear that we still need a Voting Rights Act in America today. It was right in 1965, and it is still right in 2006. There are certain sections of the VRA that will expire in February of next year. We return to Selma to say to the Congress and to the American people that voting is not yet fully fair and free in America in today. There are still legal and de facto tactics used to restrict access to the ballot box... We have come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before we lay down the burden of race and class in America. As we stand in the shadow of those brave citizens who came before, we must be prepared today to make the sacrifices that are necessary to give all Americans the fullest capability to exercise their right to vote."

Lewis calls "Bloody Sunday"  a "turning point in the Civil Rights Movement, hastening the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law on August 6 by President Lyndon Johnson."

Rep. William Jefferson scandal and the CBC
According to a report by the Milwaukee Courier, Lewis made a motion on June 8, 2006 to have Rep. William Jefferson's seat on the House Committee on Ways and Means stripped as a result of the ongoing federal investigation against him. This position differs from that of the Congressional Black Caucus, for which Lewis is a long-time member. The CBC believes Jefferson should retain the seat until the charges levied against him are proven true. 

Bio
Born February 21, 1940 in Troy, Alabama. Lewis was educated at the American Baptist Theological Seminary and at Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tennessee. There he became active in the Civil Rights movement, rising to national prominance as chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (see "Civil Rights Movement" below).

After leaving SNCC in 1966, Lewis worked with various community-oriented organizations and later became community affairs director for the National Consumer Co-op Bank in Atlanta. In 1981, he was elected to the Atlanta City Council, and in 1986, he was elected to the House, defeating then-state senator Julian Bond, another national Civil Rights leader who went on to lead the NAACP.

From his House biography: "Often called "one of the most courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced," John Lewis has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties, and building what he calls "The Beloved Community" in America. His dedication to the highest ethical standards and moral principles has won him the admiration of many of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the United States Congress."

According to the Associated Press, Lewis was "the first major House figure to suggest impeaching Bush," he argued that the president "deliberately, systematically violated the law" in authorizing the wiretapping. Lewis added: "He is not King, he is president." 

2006 elections
No major candidates announced their intentions to contest Lewis’s seat in the November 2006 election. (See U.S. congressional elections in 2006)

Money in politics
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Committees in the 110th Congress (2007-2008)

 * House Committee on Ways and Means
 * Subcommittee on Health
 * Subcommittee on Oversight -Chair

Committee assignments in the 109th Congress (2005-2006)

 * House Committee on Ways and Means
 * Subcommittee on Health
 * Subcommittee on Oversight - Ranking Minority Member

Affiliations

 * Congressional Black Caucus
 * Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.
 * Director, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights
 * Director, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation

Resources

 * Official website
 * Campaign website
 * Open Secrets - 2006 congressional races database

Published Work

 * Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (with Michael D'Orso, 1999)

Articles

 * Hazel Trice Edney, "Some CBC Members Secretly Trying to Oust Jefferson from Committee Post," Milwaukee Courier and Southeastern Star, June 13, 2006.
 * "Civil Rights Pioneer Endorses Clinton," The Trail Blog/Washington Post, October 12, 2007.

Local blogs and discussion sites

 * Georgia Unfiltered
 * A Mad Democrat
 * The Spacey Gracey Review