Lawmakers and activists around the country voiced their support for longtime Congressman John Lewis after he announced Sunday that he is battling Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The 79-year-old civil rights icon and Georgia representative said he plans to continue serving his district while undergoing treatment for the advanced disease.
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โI have been in some kind of fightโfor freedom, equality, basic human rightsโfor nearly my entire life,โ Lewis said in a statement. โI have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now.โ
Lewisโ doctors discovered the cancer during a routine checkup this month, Politico reports. Lewis said he was โ[clear-eyed] about the prognosis,โ noting that doctors gave him โa fighting chanceโ on beating the disease, according to The New York Times. Pancreatic cancer is the countryโs third leading cause of cancer deaths.
โI have decided to do what I know to do and do what I have always done: I am going to fight it and keep fighting for the beloved community,โ Lewis added. โWe still have many bridges to cross.โ
Lewis has served Georgiaโs 5th Congressional District since 1987. He first came into prominence during the civil rights movement as a student activist and one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. An advocate of getting into โgood trouble,โ he subscribed to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.โs practice of nonviolent resistance, suffering brutal beatings and enduring jail time for his activism. As the Times reports, Lewis was arrested 40 times between 1960 and 1966, taking part in the lunch counter protests, the 1961 Freedom Rides and the 1965 Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala.
The last surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington, Lewis has been looked to as the โconscience of Congressโ for decades. Many of his colleagues wrote messages of support to him on social media. Former President Barack Obama wrote, โIf thereโs one thing I love about @RepJohnLewis, itโs his incomparable will to fight. I know heโs got a more of that left in him.โ
Bernice King warned against eulogizing Lewis too quicklyโโLetโs not bury him in response to a diagnosis, no matter how dire,โ she wrote.
Lewis struck a characteristically resilient, forward-thinking note in his statement on Sunday.
โI may miss a few votes during this period, but with Godโs grace I will be back on the front lines soon,โ Lewis said. โPlease keep me in your prayers as I begin this journey.โ
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