The civil rights campaigner sometimes dubbed the "conscience of the US Congress," 79 year old John Lewis, has revealed he has advanced pancreatic cancer.
Lewis is the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
At 25, he led hundreds of protesters in the 1965 Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He was at the head of the march when he was knocked to the ground and beaten so badly by police his skull was fractured.The nationally televised images forced the country's attention on the racial inequalities being fought by King and so many others.
American religious and civil rights leaders John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr and Coretta Scott King are seen on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in 1965. Source: Archive Photos
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Lewis was arrested at least 40 times in the civil rights era, several more times since being elected as a congressman in 1986 and only recently has been helping reunite immigrant families separated by the Trump administration.
Lewis said being elected to Congress "has been the honour of a lifetime" and that he will continue working for his constituents from Capitol Hill.
"I have been in some kind of fight - for freedom, equality, basic human rights - for nearly my entire life," he said. "I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now."
US President Barack Obama walks alongside US Representative John Lewis (2nd-L) to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches. Source: AFP
In 2011 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, who had marched with Lewis hand in hand i on the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday attack.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among those who sent her best wishes to Lewis after the announcement of his illness.
