Chad Pergram remembers Congressman John Lewis as 'an American icon'
The Fox News Congressional correspondent said Lewis could potentially lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., was "an American icon decades before his election to the House in 1986," Fox News Congressional correspondent Chad Pergram stated Saturday.
In an interview on "Cavuto LIVE," Pergram remembered a passionate life of gargantuan accomplishments.
JOHN LEWIS, CIVIL RIGHTS ICON, CONGRESSMAN FOR 33 YEARS, DEAD AT 80
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"He was the youngest speaker alongside Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington in August 1963. Lewis also led various protests in the south, sit-ins at restaurants and drug stores, protesting segregated lunch counters," he recalled.
FILE - In this July 2, 1963, file photo, six leaders of the nation's largest black civil rights organizations pose at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York. From left, are: John Lewis, chairman Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee; Whitney Young, national director, Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, president of the Negro American Labor Council; Martin Luther King Jr., president Southern Christian Leadership Conference; James Farmer, Congress of Racial Equality director; and Roy Wilkins, executive secretary, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Harry Harris, File)
Lewis, 80, died Friday night after serving 33 years in Congress. Doctors diagnosed Lewis with pancreatic cancer late last year.
He was only 23 when he joined King and other speakers outside the Lincoln Memorial. According to The Washington Post,.Lewis was the last surviving speaker from the event.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"President Barack Obama spoke of how he first met John Lewis as a student in law school and hugged Lewis at his 2009 inauguration," said Pergram. "The former president said he told Lewis he never would have become president without the sacrifices he made. Although interestingly enough, Lewis initially supported Hillary Clinton's bid for president in 2008. That was much to the dismay of fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus."
"Bloody Sunday, the March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in March 1965, helped shape Lewis' legacy," he continued. "As Lewis led protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Alabama state troopers beat the future congressman so badly they cracked his skull and doctors later had to insert a steel plate into Lewis's head which he carried to his grave."
"Lewis later led lawmakers on an annual pilgrimage across the bridge to commemorate Bloody Sunday," he told host Neil Cavuto.
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"And, decades after those nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, Lewis was still deploying those same tactics practiced years before," Pergram said. "After the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando and Florida [in] 2016, Lewis led a sit-in actually sitting on the carpet on the floor inside the House chamber to protest gun violence. That went on for more than 24 hours, Neil."
"Fox is told that it's possible Lewis could lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda," he concluded.
Fox News' Dom Calicchio, Chad Pergram, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.