John Lewis made courageous and principled contributions to human freedom.

He offered his voice and his body to make Americans confront the violence inherent in the Southern system of government‐​imposed white‐​supremacist tyranny.

Rest In Peace. https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/john-lewis-libertarian-hero

In the early 1960s, Lewis was sacrificing his body and liberty to protest laws restricting the freedoms of movement, association, and exchange.

As an undergraduate at Fisk University in Nashville, Lewis organized non‐​violent sit‐​ins at segregated lunch counters.

As a Freedom Rider, Lewis spent years putting himself in danger to protest laws prohibiting blacks and whites sitting beside each other on public transportation. He was the first Freedom Rider to encounter violence by white supremacists, who bludgeoned him on multiple occasions.

In 1961, Lewis spent 37 days in Mississippi’s Parchman Penitentiary after his arrest for violating a segregation law. He had used a whites‐​only restroom.

Lewis at the age of 23 was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington. He was the most forceful of the day’s speakers in demanding freedom for AAs. In terms that will be familiar to libertarians, he implored his countrymen to fight the tyranny under which AAs lived.

“I appeal to all of you to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete.”

- @repjohnlewis, 1963

In 1964, Lewis organized voter‐​registration drives as part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer.

Lewis sought to register previously disenfranchised black voters because he knew, as Friedrich Hayek explained, “democracy…is an obstacle to the suppression of freedom.”

On March 7, 1965, Lewis led a peaceful march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The purpose of the march was to secure voting rights for African‐​Americans, in the hope of ending government tyranny against blacks.

Historians call that date “Bloody Sunday” because government agents, including many on horses, attacked the peaceful demonstrators with tear gas and billy clubs. An Alabama policeman fractured Lewis’ skull.

Various government agents arrested and imprisoned Lewis more than 40 times for peacefully protesting tyranny. Lewis watched government agents and domestic terrorists kill his friends, colleagues, political patrons, and mentors. Lewis knew these men would never face prosecution.

Yet Lewis never responded with violence.

He had a right to use violence to defend himself. He set aside that right to bring freedom to others.

Instead, Lewis demonstrated civility, magnanimity, and forgiveness toward his oppressors. Decades after two men assaulted him in a South Carolina waiting room, one of them apologized to him. Lewis did something he didn’t have to do. He graciously accepted his assailant’s apology.

Lewis peacefully protested South Africa’s policy of racial apartheid and Sudan’s genocide in Darfur, leading to two arrests outside each nation’s embassy. He has protested the Iraq War and in favor of immigrant rights, leading to his arrest near the U.S. Capitol.

Some libertarians protest that Lewis has taken un‐​libertarian positions. If libertarians can honor Founding Fathers who participated in “the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man,” then we can honor John Lewis even though he supports single‐​payer health care.

Libertarians often wonder why our movement is not broader or more diverse. One reason might be that it has yet to honor the libertarian goals and successes of the Civil Rights Movement, or the sacrifices its participants made.

Lewis struggled long and hard to secure for African‐​Americans freedoms that most white Americans never lacked. Along the way, his efforts helped to expand the freedom of whites and others to speak, protest, vote, work, exchange, travel, and marry and procreate for and with AAs.

Fin.