ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. (AP) - Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis has urged graduates at New York’s Bard College to use their education to “redeem the soul of our nation.”
The Georgia Democrat told the graduates on Saturday to keep their “eyes on the prize” and not become bitter. He quoted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. saying “hate is too heavy a burden to bear.”
Lewis was an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. He was beaten by police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965.
The 77-year-old Lewis said he thought he was going to die in Selma but he lived. He told the graduates, “You will live to tell the story.”
Bard is a private liberal arts college 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of New York City.
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