Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis is endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden in his bid to oust President Trump from the White House.
Lewis (D-Ga.) told reporters during a phone call, “It is my belief that we need Joe Biden now more than ever before.”
On Tuesday morning, Lewis and the Biden campaign released a statement attributed to the Georgia Democrat explaining his decision to back the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“I have stared down the deepest, and darkest forces in this nation. Vice President Joe Biden and I both believe that we are in a fight to redeem the soul of America. I know Joe Biden as a man of character and dignity — a man who can not, and will not rest when he sees injustice in our American home,” the statement reads.
“Joe Biden has no delusions about this nation’s past. But he knows who we can be at our best. A nation of love, freedom and equality. And, I will fight with him for that future.”
Lewis, who becomes the 38th Congressional Black Caucus member to endorse Biden, has been at the forefront of the civil rights fight, playing critical roles in seminal demonstrations for the movement including the 1963 March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the 1965 Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama.
He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2011.
In his call with reporters, Lewis echoed a call that other African American leaders who have endorsed the ex-VP have made, for Biden to select a woman of color as his running mate.
“I think Vice President Biden should look around. It would be good to have a woman of color,” he said.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the No. 3 House Democrat, whose endorsement catapulted the candidate to a sweeping victory in South Carolina, has also publicly called on Biden to select an African American woman to join the ticket.
Biden has pledged that his running mate would be a woman but would not guarantee that the pick would be a woman of color. Many black leaders have publicly argued that since black voters catapulted Obama’s former running mate to the front of the pack, they should be represented on the ticket.