Former Georgia congressman and longtime civil rights leader John Lewis will be honored with a postage stamp this year, the U.S. Postal Service announced this week.

The stamp features a photograph of Lewis taken by Marco Grob for the Aug. 26, 2013, issue of Time magazine. A photograph taken by Steve Schapiro of Lewis in a 1963 workshop about nonviolent protest in Clarksdale, Mississippi is planned for the margin of the printed stamp sheets.

The postal service announcement noted that “Lewis spent more than 30 years in Congress steadfastly defending and building on key civil rights gains that he had helped achieve in the 1960s. Even in the face of hatred and violence, as well as some 45 arrests, Lewis remained resolute in his commitment to what he liked to call ‘good trouble.’” 

Lewis died in 2020 at age 80 from pancreatic cancer.

Lewis became a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in his early 20s, suffering severe physical beatings as part of the Freedom Riders and as a participant in the 1965 protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

He helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and spoke at the 1963 March on Washington just before Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Most Read Stories

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Creative Commons License