U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who was among the “Big Six” leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, will give the commencement address at the University of Mary Washington’s 2011 undergraduate graduation ceremony Saturday, May 7 on the Fredericksburg campus.
The speech by Lewis, who was among the original Freedom Riders, will culminate the university’s semester-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides and the late James Farmer, distinguished professor of history and American Studies at UMW, who led the Freedom Rides and was a colleague of Lewis.
Born to sharecroppers in Troy, Ala., in 1940, he attended segregated public schools and was inspired by the activism surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Since then, he has remained at the forefront of the nation’s civil rights issues.
As a student at Fisk University, Lewis organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tenn., and joined the Freedom Rides that challenged segregation at interstate bus terminals across the South. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Lewis helped organize and served as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that was responsible for coordinating student activism. By 1966, he was considered one of the “Big Six” leaders of the movement along with King, Farmer, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young and A. Phillip Randolph. Although Lewis endured beatings by angry mobs and more than 40 arrests for challenging the injustice of segregation, he was a devoted advocate of nonviolence.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Lewis to direct more than 250,000 volunteers of a federal volunteer agency ACTION. He was elected to Congress in 1986 and has served as U.S. representative of Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District since then. He is senior chief deputy whip for the Democratic Party and a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Lewis has received numerous awards, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize and the National Education Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award, and is the only recipient of the John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage” for Lifetime Achievement ever granted by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. In addition, the Timberland Company has developed the John Lewis Award, which honors the congressman’s commitment to humanitarian service by acknowledging others who perform humanitarian work.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University and is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary. Lewis has been awarded more than 50 honorary degrees from colleges and universities. He is author of his biography “Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement” and his life has been chronicled in “Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement” and “John Lewis in the Lead.” He has been interviewed for numerous documentaries, is quoted frequently in newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time Magazine, and has appeared on such news programs as CNN Headline News, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and the Today Show.