John Robert Lewis: A Colossus of US Civil Rights is Dead

John Robert Lewis, US civil rights legend, congress man has died aged 80. He died of pancreatic cancer. He was the last of the "Big 6" to die. He was a follower and colleague of Martin Luther King Jr.

Lewis was a democrat congress man for Georgia's 5th congressional district for over 3 decades. 

In 1965 aged 25 he helped organise and led a march for voting rights on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ""Today, America mourns the loss of one of the greatest heroes of American history: Congressman John Lewis, the Conscience of the Congress," .

In 2011 he was awarded the highest civilian honour "the Presidential Medal of Freedom" by President Obama, the first African American president.

He was also beaten for attempting to enter a white waiting room by the KKK. John Lewis said,"Many years later, in February of '09, one of the men that had beaten us came to my Capitol Hill office -- he was in his 70's, with his son in his 40's -- and he said, 'Mr. Lewis, I am one of the people who beat you and your seat mate'" on a bus, Lewis said, adding the man said he had been in the KKK. "He said, 'I want to apologize. Will you accept my apology?'"

John Lewis accepted his apology and hugged the father and son. All 3 cried together.

"It is the power in the way of peace, the way of love," Lewis said. "We must never, ever hate. The way of love is a better way."