US Postal Service To Honor Civil Rights Leader John Lewis On Newest Stamps In 2023
The United States Postal Service announced Tuesday that civil rights leader John Lewis will be honored on some of its newest stamps for 2023 to celebrate his "life and legacy."
Lewis was at the forefront of the 1960s civil rights movement in the U.S. and was an advocate for nonviolent protesting. He died in July 2020 from pancreatic cancer.
"Devoted to equality and justice for all Americans, Lewis spent more than 30 years in Congress steadfastly defending and building on key civil rights gains that he had helped achieve in the 1960s," the USPS said in a press release.
"Even in the face of hatred and violence, as well as some 45 arrests, Lewis remained resolute in his commitment to what he liked to call 'good trouble,'" the USPS said.
The stamp will feature a photo of Lewis that appeared in Time magazine in 2013.
The Democrat was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986 and represented Georgia in Congress for 17 terms.
Lewis was born in Alabama to parents who worked as sharecroppers. As a teenager, Lewis would listen to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio and learned of the Montgomery bus boycott. Lewis would later join the Freedom Riders.
In 1965, he led the first of three marches from Selma to Montgomery across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Lewis was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2011.
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