John Lewis

John Lewis, born in 1940, Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia (1987- ). Lewis was born in Troy, Alabama. The son of an Alabama sharecropper, Lewis was the first in his family to graduate from high school. He earned two bachelor’s degrees—the first from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1961, and the second from Fisk University in Nashville in 1963. From 1963 to 1966 Lewis was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He served as executive director of the Voter Education Project in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1970 to 1976, and has continued to be active in a variety of community and civic organizations.

After an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Congress in 1977, Lewis gained a seat on the Atlanta City Council in 1981. He ran for Congress again in 1986 and was elected to represent Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes the city and suburbs of Atlanta. He was returned to office in subsequent elections.