Congresswoman mistakenly tweets of death of John Lewis; civil rights icon still alive

A Congressional colleague of civil rights icon John Lewis mistakenly tweeted Saturday that Lewis had died.

The civil rights icon is still alive.

“It’s only rumors,” Michael Collins told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the tweet spread online. “He is resting comfortably at home.”

“We deeply regret a previous tweet based on a false news report,” North Carolina Rep. Alva S. Adams tweeted after learning her original tweet was wrong.

Lewis has been battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer, a diagnosis that was announced in the last days of 2019.

Lewis is one of the last surviving leaders of the civil rights movement.

When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his movement-defining, standard-bearing “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington, Lewis, the 23-year-old chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was one of his featured warm-up acts.