Civil rights-era icon and Georgia Rep. John Lewis has long been a mainstay in the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, the long-serving and well-respected Democrat was hospitalized over the weekend after falling ill on a plane with an unspecified ailment.
He is expected to be released on Sunday.
Congressman falls ill
A spokeswoman for the congressman, Brenda Jones, said that Lewis was being held for routine observation but declined to specify where the congressman was or why he had been admitted to a hospital.
An anonymous source had told WSB-TV in Atlanta that Lewis was in a metro Atlanta-area hospital and stated that he had fallen ill on a flight to the city on Saturday.
Lewis was first elected to Congress in 1986 and has since served as the representative of Georgia’s 5th District, which encompasses much of the city of Atlanta.
Civil rights activist
Aside from his congressional service, Lewis is perhaps best known for his activism during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
In 1965, Lewis headed up the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and joined up with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the consequential march out of Selma, AL on behalf of equal voting rights for all Americans.
Lewis was one of several nonviolent protesters who was violently beaten by police during that march — he suffered a fractured skull in the melee — and gained iconic fame for his participation in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
That march, and the violent reaction to it, helped garner support in Congress for the Voting Rights Act, which was passed and signed into law by former President Lyndon Johnson just a few months later.
In recognition of the role he had played, Lewis was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the nation, in 2011 by former President Barack Obama.
In recent years, however, Lewis has been exceptionally outspoken in his staunch opposition to President Donald Trump.
Lewis reportedly thinks Trump is damaging our nation with his racism and thinks Trump should be impeached.
But that’s no way to win over the hearts of the American people — which he may learn the hard way when he’s up for reelection.