At the 1963 March on Washington, civil rights leaders asked John Lewis to tone his speech down

Before his death Friday, Rep. John Lewis was the last living speaker at the march where Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ address

By Gillian Brockell

July 18, 2020 at 2:30 a.m. EDT

As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis speaks at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963. (Bettmann Archive)

It was the biggest moment of 23-year-old John Lewis’s life. In just a few minutes, the young civil rights activist would take the podium at the Lincoln Memorial and speak to hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the Mall.

But Lewis, who died Friday at the age of 80, wasn’t savoring the moment. Tucked in a security guard’s office behind the great statue of Abraham Lincoln, he was in the middle of an argument with civil rights icons A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.