Rep. John Lewis has died at age 80 [1]. The civil rights icon and seasoned congressman had been battling stage four pancreatic cancer. On July 17, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed the news of Lewis's death [2]. Lewis served as the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district since 1986, and was known as a champion of the civil rights movement, playing a key role in the March on Washington in 1963 with Martin Luther King Jr. He announced last December that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer [3] during a routine medical exam and was seeking treatment.

"John Lewis was a titan of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and bravery transformed our nation – from the determination with which he met discrimination at lunch counters and on Freedom Rides, to the courage he showed as a young man facing down violence and death on Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the moral leadership he brought to the Congress for more than 30 years," Pelosi said in a statement.