He was the youngest leader of the 1963 March on Washington, in which King delivered his famous 'I have a dream' speech.
Lewis was just 21 when he became a founding member of the Freedom Riders, who fought segregation of the US transportation system in the early 1960s, eventually becoming one of the nation's most powerful voices for justice and equality.
Two years later Lewis nearly died while leading hundreds of marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on a peace march to Montgomery when state troopers, seeking to intimidate those demonstrating for voting rights for black Americans, attacked protesters.Fifty years later in 2015, he walked across the bridge arm in arm with Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, to mark the anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march.
"Not many of us get to live to see our own legacy play out in such a meaningful, remarkable way. John Lewis did," Obama tweeted early Saturday.
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