IOWA, USA — A local reverend spoke with Local 5 to reflect on his time spent with the late Civil Rights icon and Representative John Lewis.
Reverend Milton Cole of West Des Moines says he met Rep. Lewis while at a gathering at the Lincoln Memorial where Lewis and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were the primary speakers.
The next time Reverend Cole encountered Lewis was at the March from Selma to Montgomery.
Rev. Cole says he was lucky enough to have a conversation with him only two years ago when the new congress met in Washington and the message from Lewis remained the same.
"The message as we gathered in Washington, as we gathered in Alabama and the message as I saw him a year ago was the same: it's about kindness. It's about peaceful resistance to wrong," says Cole.
Lewis lives on through the reverend's life saying that no matter what we have to keep moving. That's why Rev. Cole says you will find a 'Black Lives Matter' and a 'Choose Kindness' sign in his front yard.
"I cried all day when I found out he died," says Rev. Cole. "But on Monday afternoon I said it's time to dry my tears and move forward as Dr. King would have done and as John Lewis would have admonished us to do."
Representative John Lewis died on July 17, 2020 at the age of 80 after a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer.