Rep John Lewis, civil rights icon, released from ‘routine’ hospital visit

ATLANTA — U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the 78-year-old civil rights icon and veteran congressman from Georgia, was released from the hospital Sunday evening after his weekend admission for an undisclosed reason.

Lewis’ spokeswoman, Brenda Jones, said in an emailed statement that Lewis left the hospital a day after he was admitted for “routine observation.”

“All tests have been completed, and doctors have given him a ‘clean bill of health,” Jones said in the statement. “He thanks everyone who shared their thoughts, prayers and concerns during his stay.”

Jones had told The Associated Press earlier that Lewis, after being admitted to the hospital Saturday night, was “resting very comfortably” during the day Sunday. She did not release Lewis’ condition or elaborate on what exactly brought him to the hospital.

Lewis, a Democrat, played a key role in the civil rights movement and marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 in Selma, Alabama. He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, led by King Jr., who engineered one of the greatest moral protests in history.

Lewis was best known for leading some 600 protesters in the 1965 Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. At the head of the march, Lewis was knocked to the ground and beaten by Alabama state troopers. His skull was fractured. Televised images forced the country’s attention on racial oppression in the South.

A veteran Democratic congressman from Atlanta, he won his first U.S. House term in 1986.