The big five Sunday morning news programs all paid tribute to Congressman John Lewis following the passing of the civil rights legend on Friday.
On CNN’s State of the Union, Jake Tapper opened by saying, “The state of our union is in mourning for the late civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis.” He spoke with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Congressman James Clyburn about the passing of their colleague.
Pressley said she felt both “inordinately blessed while being simultaneously robbed,” saying that his years of activism paved the way for others like her.
“There would be no Ayanna Pressley and countless others were it not for John Lewis. The conscience and the compass of our Congress, but I could argue for our nation.”
She said it’s particularly sad to lose Lewis at another moment of racial reckoning “when you see police states like what’s happening in Portland, unrest all around us, voter intimidation and suppression tactics.”
Tapper shared a clip from an interview he conducted with Lewis in 2011 when they visited the then-new monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and how King was inspired by King. Tapper also spoke with Clyburn, who wasn’t just a colleague of Lewis’ but a personal friend for decades.
Clyburn also appeared with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and said they had recently talked about the “breakthrough” of the Black Lives Matter movement and how similar it was to what civil rights protesters did decades ago.
When Todd remarked upon how Lewis would “open his arms to anybody” no matter how “checkered their past might be on race relations,” Clyburn agreed and said, “John often got in some uncomfortable moments because he was just so kind to everybody. He really, really believed that he should live out the scripture. He was an ordained minister, I’m a preacher kid, but we talked scripture a lot. He internalized so much of the goodness.”
He also said he absolutely supports the efforts to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge for Lewis.
Todd memorialized Lewis as a man seen as a “moral leader” by both Democrats and Republicans. He showed part of Lewis’ famous words from the March on Washington and how, decades after being brutally attacked on Bloody Sunday, Lewis returned to that same spot to march once more with others.
On Fox News Sunday, most of the hour was Chris Wallace’s big news-making interview with President Donald Trump, but Wallace ended with a tribute to Lewis showing an interview he conducted with the congressman in 2015, 50 years after Bloody Sunday.
At the time, Wallace asked how far America has come since then on race. Lewis responded, “As a nation we’ve come a great distance. White, colored signs are gone. The only place that we would see those signs today would be in a book, in a museum, or on a video.”
When asked how far America still has to go, Lewis said, “We still have a distance to travel before we lay down the burden of race… We’re not there yet, but we’re on our way.”
On ABC’s This Week, Martha Raddatz opened the program talking with Congresswomen Karen Bass — chair of the Congressional Black Caucus — and Val Demings about Lewis.
Bass said his legacy is that “he devoted his life to fighting for justice, fighting for justice and being a moral compass,” and said one of the best ways to honor it would be to get the Voting Rights Act passed.
Demings told Raddatz, “John Lewis was larger than life. I don’t think I’ve ever really met anybody like him. I was in awe of him as a young child growing up in the ’60s. My parents were very tuned in. But I was also in awe of him until the day he died. He was powerful. He was larger than life. He was beloved. But the thing I remember so much about him is that he was so humble.”
Both Bass and Demings brought up one thing they both vividly remembered as exemplary of his humility — he insisted that people simply call him John.
Raddatz started the show panel with a snippet of Nightline co-anchor Byron Pitts’ interview with Lewis in 2013.
Pitts said, “I think John Lewis symbolizes what’s possible in America, right, what’s possible with courage and conviction. This is a man from Troy, Alabama, a sharecropper’s son. He wasn’t the most eloquent. He wasn’t the most dynamic member of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. But what a force he was.”
“This was a man who, because he loved America so, because he was so optimistic about America, he believed that if he put in his life in harm’s way, he could help make America better. He didn’t do what he did because he was angry many America. I mean, he was angry about circumstances. But he believed so deeply in our country that he thought he could make a difference. And he did.”
Raddatz ended the show with one final message about Lewis, saying “his words and actions will continue to inspire generations to come” and finishing with part of Lewis’ commencement address at Washington University in 2016.
CBS’ Face the Nation was bookended by former hosts of the program — Bob Schieffer and John Dickerson — honoring Lewis. Schieffer recalled his interview with Lewis 50 years after Bloody Sunday and said, “He made America a better place. And I never knew a better man.”
Dickerson, meanwhile, offered this reflection:
“It’s hard to hold onto hope in the face of cynicism, bad-faith, and deceit, but doing so is what makes hope so durable. It has value because people like John Lewis purchased it through suffering and sacrifice. He believed America was worth the hope and the pain. Lewis’ hope also filled him with irrepressible happiness despite all that he’d been through. He was still living by a hope in equality at the end of his life. A life that is a monument to hope–belief in it and the power of it. John Lewis stood up by sitting down. They tried to deny his march, but he reached his destination. Now that his journey is over, his history is testimony to the power of hope that speaks to all of us.”
Margaret Brennan also spoke with former Secretary of State Colin Powell about Lewis. Powell called Lewis “tough as nails” and said, “He spent his whole adult life fighting these issues and going after racism. And so a man with that kind of bravery built into him is an incredible individual and he was.”
Powell was followed by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who said living in Atlanta gave people like her “the great privilege of having these giants walk amongst us.”
She also found it fitting his last public appearance was at the Black Lives Matter Plaza in D.C., saying, “Because I think in his own way, he was leaving with us this reminder that the fight continues. And while we have come a long way in this country, we still have so much further to go. And he’s passed on the baton to future generations, and I am just grateful for his life.”
CBS News anchor Michelle Miller joined Brennan to talk about the Lewis she knew growing up and seeing at social gatherings through family and friends.
She recalled the “empowering experience” Lewis felt when Dr. King reached out to him when he was so young, and said in turn Lewis was someone “seeking to hand the baton to the next generation by placing his hand out and reaching out to them to come on board.”
Incoming University of California president Dr. Michael Drake briefly touched upon Lewis and how monumental a figure he was in American civil rights history. “He was a courageous and inspiring figure,” Drake said. “This is a great loss. He did a great deal to help make this country better.”
You can watch the videos above, via CNN, NBC, Fox News Sunday, ABC, and CBS.
