U.S. Rep. John Lewis: 'the 40th anniversary man' - Center Stage - civil rights activism - Brief Article

HE was, in a very real sense, the 40th anniversary man. Forty years ago, at the age of 23, he was the youngest speaker at the landmark March on Washington.

Forty years later, as the only survivor of the front line of speakers, John Robert Lewis, an authentic Freedom Movement hero who was brutally beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., and who rose from Jim Crow Alabama to become senior chief deputy whip of the House Democratic Caucus, was hailed almost everywhere as the lengthened and lengthening shadow of the Dream.

During the same period, Congressman Lewis (D-Atlanta) continued to struggle on a number of fronts for the fulfillment of the King Dream. One of the most important of these fronts was his decades-long struggle for an African-American museum on the Mall, which came one step closer to reality when a national commission, appointed by the president, the House and the Senate, recommended building an African-American museum in "the nation's front yard," which features a number of museums, including a Native American museum and a Holocaust museum.

The Senate gave tentative approval to part of the plan, but some voices in the House raised questions about a projected site at the foot of the Capitol. Congressman Lewis, who is one of the leading voices in a biracial and bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans, Blacks and Whites, believes the proponents of the museum will overcome. He says today the same thing he said 40 years ago on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial--that the future belongs to those who "Walk with the Wind," the title of his 1998 book, and who never grow weary.

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