John Lewis, towering civil rights figure, dies aged 80

His death was confirmed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a statement on Friday night

US Representative John Lewis attends an event to introduce the "Voting Rights Advancement Act" on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2019. Reuters

US Representative John Lewis speaks during a public memorial for Robert F. Kennedy at the 50th anniversary of his assassination at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia, on June 6, 2018. Reuters

Congressman John Lewis addresses supporters of Democrat Jon Ossoff as they wait for the poll numbers to come in for Georgia's 6th Congressional District special election in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 20, 2017. Reuters

US Representative John Lewis gestures during Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center on on July 26, 2016, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. AFP

US Representative John Lewis talks to supporters along with House Democrats after their sit-in over gun-control law on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 23, 2016. Reuters

US Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and one of the original marchers, speaks during an event marking the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches at the Edmund Pettus Bridgein Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 2015. AFP

US President Barack Obama walks alongside Amelia Boynton Robinson, right, one of the original marchers, the Reverend Al Sharpton second right, First Lady Michelle Obama, left, and US Representative John Lewis, second left, Democrat of Georgia, and also one of the original marchers, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama. AFP

US Representative John Lewis speaks during the Let Freedom Ring Commemoration and Call to Action to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on on August 28, 2013. AFP

US Representative John Lewis is presented with the 2010 Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama during an East Room event at the White House on February 15, 2011 in Washington, DC. AFP

US Representative John Lewis is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on October 10, 2007. AP Photo

US Representative John Lewis at his office on Capitol Hill on May 10, 2007. AP Photo

From left, Brown Chapel AME Church Pastor James Jackson, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., US Representative John Lewis, D-Georgia, and Rev. Clete Kiley, hold hands and sing at the end of a church service in Selma, Alabama, on the commemoration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. protest march from Selma to Montgomery, on March 4, 2007. AP Photo

Former US President Gerald Ford hugs US Congressman John Lewis after the two men received John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage awards May 21, 2001 at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston. Reuters

US Representative John Lewis speaks with reporters in Washington, DC, on March 5, 1999. AP Photo

John Lewis, front left, and his wife, Lillian, holding hands, lead a march of supporters from his campaign headquarters to an Atlanta hotel for a victory party after he defeated Julian Bond in a runoff election for Georgia's 5th Congressional District seat in Atlanta, on September 3, 1986. AP Photo

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., fourth from left, foreground, locks arms with his aides as he leads a march of several thousands to the courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama. From left are: an unidentified woman, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, James Foreman, King, Jesse Douglas Sr., and John Lewis. AP Photo

Six leaders of the nation's largest black civil rights organizations pose at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York on July 2, 1963. From left, are: John Lewis, chairman Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee; Whitney Young, national director, Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, president of the Negro American Labor Council; Martin Luther King Jr., president Southern Christian Leadership Conference; James Farmer, Congress of Racial Equality director; and Roy Wilkins, executive secretary, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. AP Photo

A state trooper swings a billy club at John Lewis, right foreground, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965. AP Photo

John R. Lewis, National Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Committee, at the National Urban League headquarters in New York on August 23, 1963. AP Photo

John Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement whose bloody beating by Alabama state troopers in 1965 helped galvanise opposition to racial segregation, and who went on to a long and celebrated career in Congress, has died. He was 80.

Lewis' death was confirmed by a House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a statement on Friday night.

Lewis was the last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, led by the Rev Martin Luther King Jr.

He was best known for leading 600 protesters in the 1965 Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Lewis was knocked to the ground and beaten by state troopers. Televised images forced the country's attention on racial oppression. A Democrat from Atlanta, he won his US House seat in 1986.

"Today, America mourns the loss of one of the greatest heroes of American history," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of the 17-term congressman from Georgia.

She described Lewis, who in late 2019 was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, as "a titan of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and bravery transformed our nation."

The son of sharecroppers, Lewis was just 21 when he became a founding member of the Freedom Riders, who fought segregation of the US transportation system in the early 1960s, eventually becoming one of the nation's most powerful voices for justice and equality.

He was the youngest leader of the 1963 March on Washington, in which King delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech.

Two years later Lewis nearly died while leading hundreds of marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on a peace march to Montgomery when state troopers, seeking to intimidate those demonstrating for voting rights for black Americans, attacked protesters.

Lewis suffered a fractured skull on the day that would become known as "Bloody Sunday." Fifty years later in 2015, he walked across the bridge arm in arm with Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, to mark the anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march.

Lewis first entered Congress in 1986 and quickly became a figure of moral authority, with Pelosi labeling him "the conscience of the Congress."

Tributes poured in from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the chamber's Republican leader, hailed Lewis as "a pioneering civil rights leader who put his life on the line to fight racism, promote equal rights, and bring our nation into greater alignment with its founding principles."

Lewis had stepped away from his congressional duties in recent months as he underwent treatment for cancer.

But he returned to Washington in early June, in the midst of fiery demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, to walk in Black Lives Matter Plaza, the renamed intersection near the White House that was the site of protests against injustice.