Congressman John Lewis Has Died at Age 80

Rep. John Lewis has died at age 80. The civil rights icon and seasoned congressman had been battling stage four pancreatic cancer. On July 17, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed the news of Lewis's death. Lewis served as the U.S. Representative for Georgia's Fifth congressional district since 1986, and was known as a champion of the civil rights movement, playing a key role in the March on Washington in 1963 with Martin Luther King Jr. He announced last December that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer during a routine medical exam and was seeking treatment.

"John Lewis was a titan of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and bravery transformed our nation — from the determination with which he met discrimination at lunch counters and on Freedom Rides, to the courage he showed as a young man facing down violence and death on Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the moral leadership he brought to the Congress for more than 30 years," Pelosi said in a statement.