Birmingham’s Pancreatic Cancer Walk on April 27 Will Include Family of Rep. John Lewis

Special to The Times Growing up, Armmon Carter knew John Lewis as an older cousin who’d come home from time to time to visit his family back in Troy, Alabama. Even though Lewis by then was a Georgia congressman, his visits home were low-key. It took years before Carter realized that his cousin from just down the road was a very big deal, a legend of the Civil Rights Movement who participated in sit-ins and Freedom Rides, worked alongside other icons like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., helped organize the March on Washington, and led the first attempted Selma-to-Montgomery march, a pivotal event that became known as Bloody Sunday and helped spur Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act in 1964. “It wasn’t until I was older that it really hit me what an impact he’d had, not just on our country, but on the world,” said Carter, whose grandfather was the brother of Lewis’ mother. Carter serves on the board of the John R. Lewis Legacy Institute, a nonprofit created in 2021 to continue his cousin’s work through community engagement and service projects. As part of the institute’s three-fold mission – to advance social justice, education equity and health...