In “Chap­ter Twen­ty-Sev­en: Lion in Win­ter,” the deep bond between Con­gress­man John Lewis and his long­time aide, Michael Collins, is explored dur­ing a trou­bling time. After two decades of close com­pan­ion­ship, Collins took care of many facets of Lewis’s life, includ­ing man­ag­ing his con­gres­sion­al office and per­son­al mat­ters. How­ev­er, by fall 2019, Collins rec­og­nized con­cern­ing weight loss and over­all health changes in Lewis.

Dur­ing a plan­ning meet­ing for an upcom­ing speech, Lewis con­fid­ed to Jacob Gilli­son, his for­mer sched­uler, that he felt unwell, prompt­ing Gilli­son to insist on a med­ical exam­i­na­tion. Though Lewis agreed, dis­com­fort in his mid­sec­tion lin­gered. Collins sub­se­quent­ly sched­uled tests with Dr. Bri­an Mon­a­han, but ini­tial­ly hoped that dietary adjust­ments would solve the prob­lems. Ulti­mate­ly, tests revealed a grave diag­no­sis: Stage 4 pan­cre­at­ic can­cer.

Collins and Lewis faced this shock­ing news togeth­er, with Lewis demon­strat­ing his fierce spir­it as he pre­pared to con­tin­ue work­ing amidst his health strug­gles. He deliv­ered impas­sioned speech­es dur­ing crit­i­cal impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings, show­ing no signs of weak­ness while ral­ly­ing for civ­il rights and jus­tice.

Over the hol­i­days, Lewis attempt­ed to main­tain pos­i­tiv­i­ty, even paint­ing and cre­at­ing art as a ther­a­peu­tic out­let. How­ev­er, break­ing the news of his diag­no­sis was painful for his staff and fam­i­ly, lead­ing to an out­pour­ing of love and con­cern.

As Lewis com­menced chemother­a­py in the new year, he remained engaged in pol­i­tics, includ­ing endors­ing Joe Biden for pres­i­dent. His resilience showed in how he cel­e­brat­ed sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones despite his dete­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tion, includ­ing his eight­i­eth birth­day and the anniver­sary of Bloody Sun­day, which he addressed despite need­ing assis­tance to phys­i­cal­ly par­tic­i­pate.

Health chal­lenges per­sist­ed as he faced hos­pi­tal vis­its and inter­rup­tions tied to his treat­ment. Lewis demon­strat­ed his char­ac­ter­is­tic con­cern for oth­ers, often ask­ing about his vis­i­tors’ wel­fare, even while com­bat­ing his own ill­ness.

The chap­ter offers an inti­mate look at Lewis’s strug­gle against can­cer, illu­mi­nat­ed by emo­tion­al moments, his con­tin­u­ing com­mit­ment to activism, and ges­tures of friend­ship from notable fig­ures. Focused on his lega­cy and the impor­tance of non­vi­o­lence, Lewis remained hope­ful but real­is­tic about the chal­lenges ahead, under­scor­ing his life­time fight for jus­tice and equality【1】.