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I believe it is my obligation to tell the story of the civil rights movement to the next generation.

John Lewis

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John Lewis
Age: 80 †
Born: 1940
Born: February 21
Died: 2020
Died: July 17
Chairperson
Human Rights Activist
Politician
U.S. Representative
Troy
Alabama
John Robert Lewis
Story
Tell
Next
Civil
Stories
Obligation
Believe
Generation
Generations
Movement
Rights

More quotes by John Lewis

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But you have to have hope. You have to be optimistic in order to continue to move forward.
John Lewis
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Well, what Cory Booker and John Lewis are right about is to talk about the racist past of Donald Trump.
John Lewis
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Right now what my job is, and I think the job of Democrats and Republicans, is to protect the middle class and working families of this country from some devastating ideas that [Donald] Trump has proposed.
John Lewis
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[Donald Trump] is not going to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
John Lewis
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I've said it in the past and I'll say it again today: the vote is precious it's almost sacred.
John Lewis
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I remember being at the church a few hours after the church was bombed in Birmingham, the 16th Street Baptist Church. It was very hard and very difficult to stand on that corner across the street from the church. Or to go Mississippi and search for the three civil rights workers who came up missing. There is a lot of trauma.
John Lewis
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People should organize people to just turn up and participate in the democratic process. Knock on doors. They may not be old enough to register to vote, but they can urge their teachers, their parents, their grandparents, their mothers, their fathers, and others to get out and vote.
John Lewis
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We have so many issues today that we need to confront. Comprehensive immigration reform. We have to solve the issue of poverty, the issue of hunger, the issue of war - spending billions of dollars to kill rather than to build. We have to deal with the fact that all of our children should be receiving the best possible education.
John Lewis
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Be prepared to organize nonviolent workshops - a teach-in around what is happening in America today. Organize your teachers and schoolmates, and be prepared to engage in some action.
John Lewis
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We built a coalition of conscience, and that we can do it again, and we can go forward, and help redeem the soul of America.
John Lewis
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Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway retuning from an NAACP meeting in downtown Jackson. And then you go back there years later, and the blood is still on the driveway. They cannot wash it away.
John Lewis
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It is my hope that people today will see that, in another time, in another period, when we saw the need for people to speak up, to organize, to mobilize, and to do something about injustice, we came together.
John Lewis
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I think all Americans should be hopeful, and try to be optimistic.
John Lewis
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I think [Donald Trump] is going to be inaugurated this week. I have great concerns, and apparently Republicans do as well, and there's going to be an investigation about the role that Russian hacking played in getting him elected.
John Lewis
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Races don't fall in love, genders don't fall in love: Individuals fall in love. We all should be free to marry the person that we love.
John Lewis
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To question the legitimacy of the next United States president, you know, and you're worried about a tweet that says, hey, why don't you get back to work instead of questioning my legitimacy? Too bad.
John Lewis
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The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.
John Lewis
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We may not have chosen the time, but the time has chosen us.
John Lewis
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The events in Prague, together with the Berlin blockade, convinced the European recipients of American economic assistance that they needed military protection as well: that led them to request the creation of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which committed the United States for the first time ever to the peacetime defense of Western Europe.
John Lewis
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If we must grind up human flesh and bones in the industrial machine that we call modern America, then, before God, I assert that those who consume the coal and you and I who benefit from that service, because we live in comfort, we owe protection to those men first and we owe security for their families if they die.
John Lewis