What Did John Lewis Impact On Education

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John Lewis led a happy childhood since his birth in 1940. He was a hardworking African American boy who would help his sharecropper parents in the fields. Although happy, he constantly questioned segregation as well as the Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka ruling for not affecting his education rights. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was his inspiration. His sermons and his stand of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 was enough to encourage Lewis to make changes in the world. In 1957, Lewis left his Alabama home in exchange to American Baptist Theological Seminary in Tennessee to further educate himself to organize non violent protests such as sitting at segregated restaurant counters. Then, without telling his parents, he joined the Freedom Rides. Another inspirational racial equality advocate is James Zwerg. Zwerg was raised by Caucasian parents who always taught him “Every man is equal”, but Zwerg was raised in a small town with …show more content…

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a U.S. civil rights group, created an anti-racist bus ride as a way to end segregation. Thirteen riders ( Seven African Americans, six white), created a foundation to end segregation in the United States. Aboard the bus was John Lewis, famed politician and sixties survivor as well as his collegue, James Zwerg, who would comment “It was the right thing for me to do. I never second guessed it”, even though he expected not to live through it along with jail time and extreme violence. Soon to be Selma Marcher and Bloody Sunday survivor, Lewis began as a freedom rider with already five arrests on his record (he was nineteen years old at this time,) Little did he know that he would be named "One of the most courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced” as well as a “Very honest and open man” by Zwerg. Both were members of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Comittee, a student-organized Civil Rights activist

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