The legacy of Lewis, a civil rights icon who was first elected to Congress in 1986, shone over the vote on Monday. Lewis helped organize the Freedom Rides, spoke at the 1963 March on Washington and led the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where a state trooper fractured his skull with a billy club. That protest galvanized national support for the Voting Rights Act, which candidates for his seat pledged to defend and expand.Williams, sitting in front of a framed picture of Lewis' mugshot from an arrest during the Nashville sit-in protests of the early 1960s, campaigned on Zoom before her fellow members of the party's executive committee while "still grieving" the loss.She noted her upbringing in rural Alabama, where Lewis also grew up, and called herself "a student of the John Lewis school of politics" who has "practiced the art of getting into 'good trouble.'" Williams, a state senator representing a liberal Atlanta-based district, noted that she was arrested and taken out of the state Capitol "with zip ties on my hands" during a November 2018 protest over the results of the close gubernatorial election.
"We need someone who is not afraid to put themselves on the line for their constituents in the same way that Congressman Lewis taught us to," she added.The party's executive committee overwhelmingly voted for Williams over several other candidates, who were nominated from a pool of more than 130 applicants. The other candidatesRead More – Source
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