Lewis became ill while flying home to Atlanta on Saturday, WSB-TV reported. He had been expected at an event that afternoon.
In an early statement, the congressman’s office described his hospital stay as “routine observation” but released no details about what sent him there.
Lewis remained in the hospital through Sunday afternoon. In the evening, his spokeswoman Brenda Jones released the following statement:
Lewis’ political legacy dates to the era of racial segregation, when “he was arrested, brutally beaten and continually bore witness to death in the pursuit of equality under the law for African Americans,” as Jonathan Capehart wrote for The Washington Post.
The son of black sharecroppers, he became one of the original Freedom Riders fighting for racial integration. He spoke at the March on Washington as a young man in 1963 and has served as Congress’s living link to the civil rights battles since he first won office in 1986, representing Georgia’s 5th Congressional District.
