Rep. John Lewis (D) Elected 1986, 10th term
Born:	Feb. 21, 1940, Troy, AL
Home:	Atlanta
Education:	Amer. Baptist Theol. Seminary, B.A. 1961, Fisk U., B.A. 1963
Religion:	Baptist
Marital Status:	married (Lillian)
Elected  Office:	Atlanta City Cncl., 1981-86.
Professional Career:	Chmn., Student Nonviolent Coord. Cmte., 1963-66; Field Foundation, 1966-67; Community Organization Dir., Southern Regional Cncl., 1967-70; Exec. Dir., Voter Educ. Project, 1970-76; Assoc. Dir., ACTION, 1977-80; Community Affairs Dir., Natl. Coop. Bank, 1980-82.
DC Office	343 CHOB20515, 202-225-3801; Fax: 202-225-0351; Web site: www.house.gov/johnlewis
State Offices	Atlanta, 404-659-0116.
Additional Info
Committees · Ratings · Key Votes · Election Results District Demographics
More On Georgia
At A Glance · State Profile District Map Redistricting · Almanac Home
Recent News Coverage
Search the CongressDaily, Hotline, House Race Hotline, National Journal and Technology Daily archives using the form above:
[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Venture out of the quiet of the Ebenezer Baptist Church or the shade of Martin Luther King Jr.'s boyhood home two blocks away and into the steamy heat of the sun on Auburn Avenue--Sweet Auburn--and you can see, a mile away, downtown Atlanta's atrium-skyscrapers towering in their glory. They are evidence of the wealth and vibrant growth of the commercial capital of the South, the metropolis that has grown up where there was little more than a railroad junction at the time of the War Between the States. But the awesome achievement that is downtown Atlanta is overshadowed by the revolution made in very large part by a man who grew up on Auburn Avenue, where people who never felt air-conditioning moved slowly in the sweltering heat, and around Morehouse and Spelman colleges, where proud professionals struggled and worked hard to raise their families. Atlanta's white establishment, led by Mayors William Hartsfield and Ivan Allen and Coca-Cola's Robert Woodruff, deserve credit for abandoning segregation, but it was King and other civil rights leaders who took the risks that led them to do so. Atlanta's city fathers acted out of good will, but also with an eye for the economic growth of their city, which they knew would be hurt by violent resistance.

Yet, sadly, not all is entirely well in Atlanta. Downtown Atlanta's primacy in office buildings is being eclipsed by north-side edge cities in Buckhead and along I-285. Many of Atlanta's black neighborhoods today have been abandoned by families who have headed to subdivisions in DeKalb, Cobb and Douglas Counties, leaving the central city with vacant housing and street crime. But Atlanta also has its glories: The headquarters of world-girdling Coca-Cola and CNN, the gigantic Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the modern Martin Luther King Jr. Center that depicts the triumphs of the civil rights movement, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center, the antique Cyclorama that shows Atlanta burning during the Civil War, and the stadiums and sports facilities built for the 1996 Summer Olympics.

The 5th Congressional District of Georgia includes most of Atlanta, including much of the posh and Republican Buckhead neighborhood in the north, plus the suburbs of East Point to the south. It also extends a tentacle north along Route 400 to include a part of Roswell and another northwest to include a small part of Cobb County. Redistricting in 2002 reduced the district's black population from 62% to 56% but the 5th remains overwhelmingly Democratic--72% for John Kerry in 2004.

The congressman from the 5th District is John Lewis, who made history a long generation ago as a hero of the civil rights movement, as he recounted in his 1998 autobiography, Walking With the Wind. A sharecropper's son from Troy, Alabama, he was seized by religious fervor as a child, preaching in the barnyard, determined to be a minister. Lewis was the first in his family to finish high school; he wrote to Ralph Abernathy for help in suing for the right to enter Troy State College; he met Martin Luther King Jr. when he was 18. In 1959, at 19, he helped organize the first lunch-counter sit-in, which was received with open hostility hard to imagine today. In 1960, the day after John Kennedy was elected, Lewis sat in the Krystal Diner in Nashville while a waitress poured cleansing powder down his back and water over his food; he went to talk to the manager, who turned a fumigating machine on him. In May 1961, he was on the first of the Freedom Rides, riding buses as they were attacked and burned; he was viciously beaten in Rock Hill, South Carolina and Montgomery, Alabama. He spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, criticizing Kennedy liberals for inaction on civil rights and calling for massive help for the poor. In 1964, he helped coordinate the Mississippi Freedom Project. In 1965, he led the Selma-to-Montgomery march to petition for voting rights and was beaten by policemen who fractured his skull. Modestly, quietly, maintaining his poise and good judgment under harsh circumstances, Lewis was one of the people who risked their lives many times to make the civil rights revolution happen. He worked for Robert Kennedy for president in 1968, and was with him in Indianapolis when they heard King was killed, and in Los Angeles just before Kennedy himself was shot.

Lewis's first foray into electoral politics was unsuccessful: He ran in 1977 to replace Andrew Young in the House and was soundly beaten by Wyche Fowler (but ran ahead of Republican Paul Coverdell, who beat Fowler in the 1992 Senate election). After winning a seat on the Atlanta Council in 1981, Lewis ran for Congress in 1986, and trailed Julian Bond 47%-35% in the primary. But even though Bond won more than 60% of the black vote, Lewis won the runoff by assembling a coalition of poor blacks and affluent whites: "Vote for the tugboat, not the showboat" was his slogan, stressing his hard work on local issues. He has been re-elected easily since.

Lewis has been a strong partisan, with one of the most liberal voting records in the House. Usually quiet, he can speak in the cadences of black preachers, as he did on the Gulf War resolution in January 1991 and the impeachment of Bill Clinton in December 1998. He is the Democrats' senior chief deputy whip, a member of the leadership, and has a seat on Ways and Means. Only occasionally does he defect from his party, as when he opposed the 1994 crime bill because of his disapproval of capital punishment. He furiously voiced his disappointment when Republicans captured the House in 1994 and argued passionately against the Republican welfare bills.

Lewis has worked to commemorate the civil rights revolution in which he played such a large part. He got a federal building in Atlanta named for Martin Luther King Jr. and got the route from Selma to Montgomery designated a National Historic Trail. He has said affirmative action should move from race to class as a criterion, but he has stoutly defended racial quotas and preferences and opposed school vouchers for low-income children in Washington, D.C. He passed a Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act, setting up a research center at the National Institutes of Health. He spotlighted what he charged was racial profiling in Customs searches at airports. For many years he sponsored legislation to authorize an African-American history museum on the Mall; co-sponsored by Georgia Republican Jack Kingston and Senator Sam Brownback, it finally became law in December 2003. In 2004 he sponsored a law to exchange lands with the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.

In August 1999, Lewis declared that he was running for majority whip should Democrats win a House majority; Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer had already started lining up support. But not all Congressional Black Caucus members supported him, and Lewis left the race (which turned out to be academic) in July 2000. In 2004 he and Martin Frost celebrated the long history of mutual support of American blacks and Jews. In March 2004 he testified against a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. "We have been down this road before in this country. The right to liberty and happiness belongs to each of us and on the same terms, without regard to either skin color or sexual orientation."

Lewis was reelected without opposition in 2002 and 2004.

Committees

• Senior Chief Deputy Minority Whip
.
• Ways & Means (6th of 17 D): Health; Oversight (RMM).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	100	100	100	100	30	14	10	4	0	7	--
2003	90	--	100	100	--	26	17	9	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	92%	--	0%		98%	--	0%
Social	92%	--	0%		88%	--	0%
Foreign	94%	--	0%		94%	--	0%
For National Journal's complete 2004 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)
1. Drilling in ANWR N 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts N 3. Medicare/Rx Bill N 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. Y 5. DC School Vouchers N 6. Ban Human Cloning N		7. Restrict Gun Liability N  8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage N 10. Fund Iraq War N 11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds Y 12. Intelligence Reorg. N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	John Lewis (D)	unopposed
2004 primary	John Lewis (D)	unopposed
2002 general	John Lewis (D)	unopposed
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (77%); 1998 (79%); 1996 (100%); 1994 (69%); 1992 (72%); 1990 (76%); 1988 (78%); 1986 (75%)

2004 Presidential Vote Kerry (D) 176,332 (72%) Bush (R) 65,488 (27%)

2000 Presidential Vote Gore (D) 136,606 (70%) Bush (R) 55,605 (28%)

For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Fifth District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D +23
• District Size: 254 square miles
• Population in 2000: 629,727; 99.5% urban; 0.5% rural
• Median Household Income: $39,725; 19.7% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 16.7% blue collar; 68.1% white collar; 15.2% gray collar; 9.5% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 34.4% White, 55.7% Black, 2.2% Asian, 0.2% Amer. Indian, 0.0% Hawaiian, 1.2% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 6.1% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 5.4% English, 4.5% German, 4.4% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.