Civil Rights Icon Named Bowie State Commencement Speaker

BOWIE, MD– Congressman John Lewis --- lauded for his Civil Rights work at Selma and the March on Washington -- will be the spring commencement speaker at Bowie State University.

Lewis will speak to 650 graduates and their families at 10 a.m. on May 23 at the Xfinity Center in College Park, according to a news release.

As a student at Fisk University, Lewis volunteered to participate in the 1961 Freedom Rides, which challenged segregation at interstate bus terminals across the South. He risked his life by sitting in seats reserved for white patrons, was beaten severely by angry mobs and was arrested by police for challenging Jim Crow segregation in the South, the release says.

As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which Lewis helped form to organize student activism in the movement, he promoted sit-ins and other activities. By 1963, he was dubbed one of the Big Six leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and was an architect of and a keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington. That was capped by the Rev. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Congressman Lewis played a pivotal role in some of the most seminal moments of the Civil Rights Movement. He coordinated SNCC efforts to organize voter registration drives and community action programs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer; helped to spearhead a peaceful protest of more than 600 people across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL,, which ended in a confrontation with state troopers known as “Bloody Sunday;” worked as associate director of the Field Foundation; and participated in the Southern Regional Council’s voter registration programs.

He later became the director of the Voter Education Project, which registered nearly four million minority voters.

He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and to Congress in 1986, serving as U.S. Representative of Georgia's Fifth Congressional District since then. He is Senior Chief Deputy Whip, a member of the House Ways & Means Committee, a member of its Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, and Ranking Member of its Subcommittee on Oversight.

He is the recipient of numerous awards from eminent national and international institutions, including the highest civilian honor granted by President Barack Obama, the Medal of Freedom and the only John F. Kennedy "Profile in Courage Award" for Lifetime Achievement ever granted by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

Lewis holds a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University and graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been awarded over 50 honorary degrees from prestigious colleges and universities throughout the United States.

>>Photo via Congressman Lewis' website