From staff reports

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a founding father of the Civil Rights Movement, has accepted an invitation to be graduation speaker at Alcorn State University’s spring commencement.

Rep.John LewisBorn in 1940 in Troy, Ala., Lewis was, before the age of 25, a national leader and is identified with Whitney Young, A. Phillip Randolph, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer and Roy Wilkins as one of the top six architects of desegregation. At 23, he was a keynote speaker at the March on Washington in August 1963, the same event where King made the “I Have A Dream” speech.

He was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 until 1966 and was an organizer and participant, as well as a victim of police batons in the seminal March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday” march at the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Ala. In 1964, he conducted voter registration drives in Mississippi as part of Freedom Summer.

In Congress, he has won bipartisan respect.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said, “I’ve seen courage in action on many occasions. I can’t say I’ve seen anyone possess more of it, and use it for any better purpose and to any greater effect, than John Lewis.” U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. and speaker of the House, has called Lewis “the conscience of the U.S. Congress.”

Lewis holds a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University, and he is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary, both in Nashville. He has been awarded more than 50 honorary degrees from colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Alcorn’s graduation will be at 8:30 a.m. May 10 at Jacks Spinks Stadium.