About 30 people honored the legacy of U.S. Rep. John Lewis on Tuesday in the 400 block of Penn Street by gathering to promote increased voter registration and to resist threats against the right to vote.
Event organizer Phila Back noted that in 1964 Lewis, then a 24-year-old civil rights activist serving as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, led the Mississippi Freedom Summer for voter education and registration. The following year, he organized voter registration in the Selma, Ala., voting rights campaign and became nationally known during the Selma to Montgomery marches in which he was beaten on the infamous “Bloody Sunday.” Six months later the Voting Rights Act was passed into law.