July 24, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 131 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E675]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                    HONORING CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. DAVID E. PRICE

                           of north carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 22, 2020

  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I join in the tributes to 
John Lewis with great personal appreciation for his extraordinary life 
and work and for the opportunity to have served alongside him as friend 
and colleague for more than thirty years.
  My wife Lisa and I first got to know John and his late wife Lillian 
as new members of the House, classmates first elected in 1986. I have 
seen him advance to a senior position on the Ways and Means Committee, 
fighting especially to secure good, affordable health care for all. He 
has also invested great effort in protecting, and then restoring, the 
Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court eliminated the crucial 
preclearance process.
  From the start, however, John used his position to interpret and 
educate as well as to legislate. Most famously, he led the annual Faith 
and Politics pilgrimage to that bridge in Selma, the site of Bloody 
Sunday, where John almost lost his life, among other civil rights 
sites. But a day did not go by that he did not recount to colleagues or 
constituents or total strangers the history and meaning of the 
Movement. He was never too busy--I expect all of us have witnessed 
this--to stop whatever he was doing to greet a school group with a word 
of inspiration or to answer a visitor's questions.
  While John's place in history is secured by his bold and visionary 
civil rights leadership, exemplified by his courage to press forward on 
that bridge, his greatness also consists of a lifetime telling and 
retelling the story and calling our country and all of us to our better 
selves. His leadership had biblical qualities, evoking both the call to 
justice of the Hebrew prophets and the love ethic of the Sermon on the 
Mount. We often say that someone was ``one of a kind'', but of John it 
was really true.
  John's death leaves a huge void. His memory leaves us profoundly 
grateful to have shared some portion of his journey and also compels us 
to carry forward his vision of justice that ``rolls down like waters'' 
and the struggles it requires.

                          ____________________