[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 165 Introduced in House (IH)]
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117th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 165
Honoring the life and legacy of John Robert Lewis and commending John
Robert Lewis for his towering achievements in the nonviolent struggle
for civil rights.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 25, 2021
Ms. Williams of Georgia (for herself, Mr. Bishop of Georgia, Ms.
Pressley, Mr. Danny K. Davis of Illinois, Ms. Moore of Wisconsin, Ms.
Clarke of New York, Mr. McEachin, Mr. Neguse, Ms. Lee of California,
Ms. Norton, Ms. Kelly of Illinois, Mr. Carson, Ms. Adams, Mr. Evans,
Mrs. Lawrence, Ms. Underwood, Mrs. Demings, Ms. Plaskett, Mr. Torres of
New York, Mr. Johnson of Georgia, Mr. Horsford, Mrs. Hayes, Ms. Bass,
Mr. Hastings, Mr. Rush, Mr. Bowman, Mr. Jones, and Mrs. Beatty)
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee
on House Administration
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Honoring the life and legacy of John Robert Lewis and commending John
Robert Lewis for his towering achievements in the nonviolent struggle
for civil rights.
Whereas John Robert Lewis (referred to in this preamble as ``Mr. Lewis'') was
born on February 21, 1940, near Troy, Alabama, the third of 10 children
born to his mother Willie Mae (nee Carter) and his father Eddie Lewis, a
sharecropper;
Whereas, at 5 years old, Mr. Lewis was given responsibility for the family
chicken flock, including his favorite, Li'l Pullet, which he tended to
with great care and to which he would preach nearly every evening,
which--
(1) led his family to give Mr. Lewis the childhood nickname of
``Preacher''; and
(2) instilled in Mr. Lewis an early desire to enter the clergy;
Whereas, from a young age, Mr. Lewis insisted on attending school daily, defying
his parents' instructions to work the family farm, which established
within Mr. Lewis a lifelong commitment to education and enlightenment;
Whereas when Mr. Lewis was 15 years old he was ``shaken to the core'', as
described in his memoir ``Walking With the Wind'', by the Mississippi
murder of Emmett Till, deepening his passionate opposition to
segregation and Jim Crow laws;
Whereas, as a high school student, Mr. Lewis intensely followed the progress of
the Montgomery Bus Boycott (referred to in this preamble as the
``Boycott'') in 1955 and 1956, awakening him to the power of nonviolent
resistance to segregation;
Whereas Mr. Lewis wrote in his memoir that the Boycott ``changed my life more
than any other event before or since'';
Whereas, while following the progress of the Boycott, Mr. Lewis was inspired by
radio broadcasts featuring one of the leaders of the Boycott, Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. (referred to in this preamble as ``Dr. King'')--
(1) whom Mr. Lewis' parents referred to as ``that young preacher''; and
(2) whose example deepened Mr. Lewis' ambition to become a minister;
Whereas, inspired by Dr. King, Mr. Lewis, on February 16, 1956, 5 days before
his 16th birthday, preached his first public sermon, entitled ``A
Praying Mother'', at Macedonia Baptist Church in Troy, Alabama, which
came from the First Book of Samuel and discussed the example of Hannah,
mother of Samuel, which sermon made such an impact that it was published
in the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper;
Whereas, on February 18, 1956, 2 days after Mr. Lewis gave his first public
sermon, a relative of Mr. Lewis, Thomas Brewer of Columbus, Georgia, a
voting rights activist working with the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (referred to in this preamble as the
``NAACP''), was shot to death by a White man who was never indicted for
the murder;
Whereas Mr. Lewis joined the NAACP in the summer of 1956;
Whereas, in 1958, Mr. Lewis wrote a letter to Dr. King, who responded with a
round trip bus ticket for Mr. Lewis to visit Montgomery, Alabama, where
Mr. Lewis and Dr. King met at Reverend Ralph David Abernathy's First
Baptist Church;
Whereas, while a student at the American Baptist Theological Seminary in
Nashville, Tennessee, Mr. Lewis--
(1) was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (referred to in this preamble as the ``SNCC''); and
(2) organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, pushing Nashville
to become the first major city in the South to begin the desegregation of
public facilities;
Whereas Mr. Lewis graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in
1961, and was subsequently ordained as a Baptist minister;
Whereas, in 1961, Mr. Lewis became one of the 13 original Freedom Riders, who
challenged segregated interstate travel throughout the South;
Whereas, at just 23 years old, Mr. Lewis helped organize the 1963 March on
Washington, at which--
(1) Dr. King gave his famous ``I Have a Dream'' speech; and
(2) Mr. Lewis vowed, in his address at the Lincoln Memorial, to
``splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them back
together in the image of God and democracy'';
Whereas Mr. Lewis led demonstrations against racially segregated hotels,
restrooms, swimming pools, and public parks for which he was brutally
beaten, left unconscious in his own blood, and arrested 40 times,
spending countless nights in county jails and 37 days in Parchman
Penitentiary;
Whereas, in 1963, as Chair of the SNCC, Mr. Lewis moved to Atlanta, Georgia;
Whereas, on March 7, 1965, on what would become known as ``Bloody Sunday'', Mr.
Lewis led 600 peaceful demonstrators demanding their right to vote
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where Mr. Lewis, who
suffered a fractured skull, and other demonstrators were met with
violence and police brutality;
Whereas, after televised images of the Bloody Sunday violence in Selma shocked
the conscience of the United States, President Lyndon B. Johnson called
for equal voting rights legislation before a joint session of Congress,
which evolved into his signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (52
U.S.C. 10301 et seq.) on August 6, 1965;
Whereas, on December 21, 1968, Mr. Lewis married the love of his life, Lillian
Miles, who was his best friend, closest ally, and most steadfast
supporter until her death on December 31, 2012, the 45th anniversary of
their meeting;
Whereas, in 1970, Mr. Lewis became director of the Voter Education Project,
which added nearly 4,000,000 minority voters to the voter rolls and
changed the political landscape of the United States forever;
Whereas, in 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Mr. Lewis to direct more than
250,000 volunteers of ACTION, which was then a Federal volunteer agency;
Whereas, in 1981, Mr. Lewis won elected office for the first time as an at-large
Councilman on the Atlanta City Council, where he was a powerful advocate
for ethics and neighborhood preservation, including saving from
destruction the historic neighborhoods of the Old Fourth Ward, Inman
Park, Candler Park, and Druid Hills;
Whereas, in 1982, Mr. Lewis worked with the American Jewish Committee to found
the Atlanta Black-Jewish Coalition, part of his decades-long friendship
and alliance with the Jewish community of Georgia, which later led to
the establishment of the Congressional Black-Jewish caucus;
Whereas, in 1986, Mr. Lewis became the second African American to represent
Georgia in Congress since Reconstruction;
Whereas Mr. Lewis fought for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Public
Law 102-166; 105 Stat. 1071), which was signed into law by President
George H.W. Bush;
Whereas, in 2001, Mr. Lewis was awarded the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation
Profile in Courage Award for ``his extraordinary courage, leadership and
commitment to civil rights'';
Whereas Mr. Lewis led the effort to build what is now known as the Sam Nunn
Atlanta Federal Center, one of the largest Federal buildings in the
United States;
Whereas, in 2003, Mr. Lewis secured authorization for construction of the
National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National
Mall in Washington, DC;
Whereas, in 2007, Mr. Lewis introduced the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights
Crime Act of 2007 (28 U.S.C. 509 note; Public Law 110-344) to
investigate unsolved civil rights crimes, which was signed into law by
President George W. Bush in 2008;
Whereas, in 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Mr. Lewis the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States;
Whereas Mr. Lewis' colleagues referred to him as the ``conscience of the
Congress'' for his--
(1) relentless pursuit of justice;
(2) unflinching commitment to building what Dr. King and Mr. Lewis
referred to as the ``Beloved Community'', a society without poverty,
racism, or violence; and
(3) willingness to make what he called ``good trouble, necessary
trouble'' to confront acts of injustice; and
Whereas, on July 17, 2020, Mr. Lewis died, devastating his family, his staff,
the City of Atlanta, the State of Georgia, and the people of the United
States, who united to honor his monumental legacy of hard work and self-
sacrifice in the pursuit of liberty and justice for all, which
culminated in Mr. Lewis lying in state at the United States Capitol
before his memorial service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) honors the life and legacy of John Robert Lewis, an
American hero and civil rights leader who--
(A) faced brutality and suffered grievous injuries
while remaining steadfastly committed to the nonviolent
struggle for civil rights;
(B) dedicated his life to defending the dignity of
all people and building the ``Beloved Community''; and
(C) spent more than 3 decades as a Member of
Congress defending and strengthening civil rights; and
(2) commends John Robert Lewis for his towering
achievements in the nonviolent struggle for civil rights.
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