The son of sharecroppers, John Robert Lewis graduated from American Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tennessee.

A Freedom Rider, John Lewis was beaten bloody by an angry mob of Klansmen on Saturday May 20, 1961 at the bus terminal in Montgomery, Alabama. He was a keynote speaker at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, at which Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech . Less than two years later, on Sunday, March 7, 1965, as John Lewis, Dr. King and 600 civil rights marchers headed east from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama, they were severely beaten at Edmund Pettis Bridge, by state police and sheriff's department officers, with their complement of billy clubs, tear gas, and bully whips in what became known as "Bloody Sunday."

Mr. Lewis was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1986 and has been reelected every two years, facing no opposition since 2002. As a U.S. Representative, he is a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention and on October 12, 2007 endorsed for the Democratic nomination for President Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom he supported through Georgia's primary on February 5. When in January, according to ajc.com (Atlanta Journal-Constitution website), a Repub political consultant used an anonymous, automated phone call to criticize Lewis' support for Clinton over Obama, Lewis reportedly said of switching allegiance "It's unthinkable. "You make a commitment, you keep that commitment."

Now John R. Lewis telling the New York Times, as reported on 2/14/08, “something is happening in America, and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap” and that he could “never, ever do anything to reverse the action” of the voters of his district, who voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in the primary. On February 15, Lewis told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the report by the Times' Jeff Zeleny is "inaccurate"- but the reporter adamantly maintains that Lewis' intent was clear. The same day, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a black South Carolinian whom Lewis serves as chief deputy, says "John is wrestling with this."

We all can sympathize with the weighty decision facing John Lewis. Yet, when party rules added Democratic officeholders, members of the Democratic National Committee, and activists as delegates, they were not designated in order to ratify the vote in their district, their state, or the nation as a whole (in which many Independents and Republicans have voted). They were expected to exercise independent judgement which, especially given John Lewis' long record of service to nation and party, is a right and privilege, as well as an obligation. Those individuals who decided long ago to endorse either Democratic candidate may have been premature, even foolish. But they did make a commitment. And just as Senator Edward Kerry, Senator John Kerry, and Governor Patrick Deval, all Massachusetts officeholders/superdelegates who endorsed Obama before a primary which Hillary Clinton won convincingly, have not questioned their decision, neither should Lewis.