"Black teachers, black lawyers, black doctors, were told they couldn't read and write well enough to vote," he said.

The struggle for voting rights came to a headearly in 1965, in Selma, Ala., in an event thatcame to be known as "Bloody Sunday."

Lewis helped organize an "orderly, silent,peaceful" march from Selma to Montgomery by 600people, primarily elderly men and women, he said.

The marchers departed from the parking lot of achurch and proceeded across a bridge. At the otherside Alabama state troopers were waiting.

"They beat us with nightsticks and bullwhipsand threw tear gas," Lewis said.

Lewis was hit on the head by a nightstick.

"I thought I was going to die. I saw death, andI stared him down," he said.

Lewis suffered a concussion, but the movementprevailed. Two weeks later, more than 35,000people marched into Montgomery, and later thatyear Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.

Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, public serviceprofessor of jurisprudence at the Kennedy Schoolof Government (KSG), introduced Lewis after aperformance by the Kuumba Singers.

"On my list of heroes, whether from the 18th,19th or 20th centuries, no one ranks higherthan--and it is difficult for me to find the equalof--John Lewis."

Higginbotham stressed that none of the renownedHarvard professors of Afro-American studies,including himself, has the first-hand experienceof Lewis.

"Not one of us had our skulls fractured, facedpolice dogs, got knocked down by fire hoses," hesaid. "Not one of us faced death for the beliefthat equal justice under the law [is a fundamentalright]."

Perhaps Lewis summed up his involvement in theCivil Rights movement best when he said, "Equalityis an ongoing struggle. It's not one day, not onemonth, but a lifetime."

Audience members gave Lewis high praise, forhis words and his deeds.

"It was one the best speeches I've ever heard,"Nnamdi D. Okike '02 said. "It was an amazinghistory of the movement and of his life."

Stephen A. Jacob, a first-year student at KSG,echoed Okike's reaction. "He encapsulated thefeeling of the Civil Rights movement, which he wassuch an integral part of. It's so important to beat this sort of event.