BREAKING: Rep. John Lewis, civil rights icon, has died at age 80 after a monthslong battle with cancer. msnbc.com/11th-hour/watc…
The longtime Georgia congressman, an advocate of non-violent protest who had his skull fractured by Alabama state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, was the last surviving speaker from 1963's March on Washington.
Born near Troy, Alabama on Feb. 21, 1940 and raised on a cotton farm, Lewis attended segregated public schools — and questioned why after hearing Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio.
Speaker Pelosi on John Lewis: "Today, America mourns the loss of one of the greatest heroes of American history ... May his memory be an inspiration that moves us all to, in the face of injustice, make ‘good trouble, necessary trouble.’" 
Sen. Majority Leader McConnell: "I will never forget joining hands with John ... at a 2008 ceremony honoring his friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It could not have been more humbling to consider what he had suffered and sacrificed so those words could be sung in that place.’"
Rep. John Lewis in April 2018
Family of John Lewis: "He was honored and respected as the conscience of the US Congress and an icon of American history, but we knew him as a loving father and brother...a stalwart champion in the ongoing struggle to demand respect for the dignity and worth of every human being"
