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Apple home page honors Rep. John Lewis

The company removed all product promotion from Apple.com to mark the life of the iconic civil rights activist, who died Friday.

Natalie Weinstein Former Senior Editor / News
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Natalie Weinstein
2 min read
apple-homepage-john-lewis.png

Apple's home page on Sunday

 Screenshot by CNET

Apple  transformed its home page on Sunday to honor Rep. John Lewis. The civil rights icon and longtime Congressman died Friday, aged 80, after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

The home page, which normally promotes Apple products, instead features a photograph of Lewis and one of his most famous quotes: "Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."

Lewis, who was Black, was born in 1940 in Alabama. The son of sharecroppers, he joined the civil rights movement to fight segregation when he was a teenager in the late 1950s and became a close follower of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 

Lewis joined sit-ins, protests and marches, including the infamous Bloody Sunday march in 1965 across a bridge in Selma, Alabama. Lewis suffered a near-fatal beating from police while marching that day, according to CBS News. He helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and served as director of the Voter Education Project.

He was arrested more than 40 times over his lifetime in the fight for equal rights, according to CBS News. He was elected to the Atlanta city council in the early 1980s and then ran for Congress. He served in the US House of Representatives for 17 terms, a Democrat representing Georgia. President Barack Obama awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

Lewis continued to speak out against injustice as he was fighting cancer. He decried the police killing of George Floyd, who died May 25 as a Minneapolis officer pressed a knee into Floyd's neck for 9 minutes. "The madness must stop," Lewis said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted about Lewis on Friday, calling him an "American hero."

A documentary about his life, "John Lewis: Good Trouble," was released this summer. It is available to stream on several services, including  Apple TV .