John Lewis by the Decade

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John Lewis is born.

Lewis preaches his first sermon, and becomes interested in civil rights following the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Lewis becomes one of the 13 original Freedom Riders, later becoming the chairman of SNCC, is arrested multiple times for nonviolent protests, and has his skull fractured marching across a bridge in Selma, Alabama.

Lewis runs for Congress, but is not elected. He then accepts a position with the Carter administration.

Lewis is elected to Atlanta city council, and then is elected to Congress.

The sculpture The Bridge in Atlanta is erected, dedicated to Lewis, and he loudly opposes the Gulf War.

Lewis protests the Iraq war, and is arrested for a protest outside the Sudanese embassy in response to the Darfur Genocide. When Barack Obama is elected president, he gives Lewis a signed photograph of the inauguration with the inscription 'Because of you, John.'

The National Museum of African American History and Culture, a project Lewis had fought for since 1988, opens next to the Washington Monument, and he is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.

Lewis dies of pancreatic cancer and becomes the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. His casket was taken across the same route he walked on Bloody Sunday in Selma.