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John Lewis: After the Angry Words
By Jacqueline Trescott

It isn't the day of the Great March itself that reverberates most in John Lewis' memory, but the commotion about his speech.  

Lewis, then chairmen of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was at 23 the youngest of the so-called Big Six civil rights leaders to address the march. And on the eve of the gathering, a committee member read his speech and found a line about "revolution," sparking a long night of trouble and brokering.

"I came back to my room and Bayard Rustin had slipped a note under the door saying there was some concern about my speech," recalled Lewis, who is now a member of the Atlanta, Ga., city council, and whose personal road from the march to politics is considered one of the most valiant in civil rights annals. If there was a
 
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John Lewis in 1979. Right, civil rights leaders plan the 1963march: From left, John Lewis, Whitney Young, A Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, James Farmer and Roy Wilkins.

By Harry Naltchayan — The Washington Post