"If not us, then who?"

Here's a favorite quote among many from U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia) published overnight as a grateful nation recalls this giant of the civil rights movement who passed yesterday, age 80, of pancreatic cancer.

He was recalling during 2004 how --- as a child --- preaching to the chickens on his family's farm near Troy, Alabama, prepared him for life in Washington, D.C.

"I say now, when I look back on it, some of these chickens would bow their heads. Some of these chickens would shake their heads. They never quite said 'Amen,' but they tended to listen to me much better than some of my colleagues listen to me today in the Congress, and some of those chickens were a little more productive. At least they produced eggs."

This reference is lifted from an excellent National Public Radio report that may be accessed here.

An organizer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, youthful keynote speaker during the 1963 March on Washington, bloodied on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday 1965, Mr. Lewis was a fighter until the end, among other gestures declining to attend the inauguration of our current president after that sad little caricature of humanity began his descent into the hell of full-blown racism.

May we all continue to draw inspiration from John Lewis's example during the days that follow.