Rep. John Lewis to Receive Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal

Congressman John Lewis will receive the 2016 Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in September. The announcement, made yesterday, said that Lewis will be recognized for his “courageous dedication to civil rights and the Constitution.”

Lewis is the only living “Big Six” leader of the civil rights movement, which included Martin Luther King, Jr., James Farmer, A. Phillip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young. Lewis helped lead the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on “Bloody Sunday” in 1965. This event was recently memorialized in the Oscar-nominated film Selma. Since 1987, Lewis has represented Georgia’s 5th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Established in 1988, the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal “annually honors men and women of courage and conviction who strive to secure the blessings of liberty to people around the globe,” according to the announcement.

The ceremony will take place on September 19th and will be broadcast locally on 6ABC.