Meeks honors legendary colleague John Lewis, civil rights leader C.T. Vivian

Late Rep. John Lewis received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2011. White House photo

By David Brand

Speaking at a rally in Roy Wilkins Park Sunday, Rep. Gregory Meeks took time to honor his late colleague John Lewis, the veteran congressmember and hero of the Civil Rights Movement who died Saturday.

Lewis, who risked his life to resist legal segregation and survived a violent assault by police while marching in Selma in 1965, died of pancreatic cancer at age 80. He spoke at the 1963 March on Washington and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. to expose and overturn Jim Crow laws.

“One of the greatest honors of my life has been the ability to sit down on a continuous basis next to John Robert Lewis,” said Meeks, who took office in 1998.

He called Lewis a “dear friend and colleague who I served with for all of the 22 years I served in Congress.”

Lewis was elected to Congress in 1987 after serving for six years in the Atlanta city council.

Meeks also held a moment of silence for another giant of the Civil Rights Movement, Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian, who died Saturday at age 95. Vivian participated in the Freedom Rides of the early 1960s and joined the first recorded lunch counter sit-in in Peoria, Illinois in 1947.

He served in the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and founded the National Anti-Klan Network. 

Vivian was “one of the fathers of the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement who sacrificed much so that we could have an improvement in our land,” Meeks said.

President Barack Obama presented both Lewis and Vivian with the National Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.