“When I walked through that door, Dr. King said: ‘Are you the boy from Troy? Are you John Lewis?’ And I said, ‘Dr. King, I am John Robert Lewis.’ So from that moment on, he started calling me ‘The Boy From Troy.’” The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom approaches later this month. Representative John Lewis, a son of Alabama sharecroppers and now a member of Congress, is the sole surviving speaker from that day. “This is all of us standing before the ceremony. You could see hundreds and thousands of people coming toward Constitution Avenue. And we knew then that we were going to have many more people than we expected. It was a very special day. I felt so uplifted and so moved.” Historians tend to focus on Martin Luther King’s famous speech. But Mr. Lewis might have grabbed the spotlight if he had given the speech he was planning. And I didn’t think what President Kennedy had proposed went far enough. I thought it was too little and I thought it was too late.” “You tried to say that.” “I tried to say it, and some people didn’t like what I had planned to say. And we made some changes.” Two years later, he led another march, in Selma, Ala. What happened there horrified the nation. “When we got to the top of the bridge, the highest point on the bridge, down below we saw a sea of blue: Alabama state troopers. And we continued to walk.” “I had a concussion at the bridge. I thought I saw death. I thought I was going to die. And I stood up and said something like, ‘I don’t understand it. How President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam and cannot send troops to Selma, Ala., to protect people whom he desires to register to vote.’” “You almost lost your life.” “I gave a little blood.” In 1986, Mr. Lewis was elected to Congress. Today, in many ways, he is still fighting a half-century-old battle. This June the Supreme Court struck down a central part of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mr. Lewis had witnessed President Johnson sign the bill into law. “I was sad. I almost cried. But I wouldn’t let tears come down. I just wouldn’t do it. It made me very sad because there were people who literally gave their very lives for the right to vote. If it hadn’t been for the March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act of ’64, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, for the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and involvement of hundreds and thousands of other people, there would be no Barack Obama as president of the United States.” Later this month Mr. Lewis will go back to the Lincoln Memorial for a 50th anniversary march. When people tell him they are discouraged about race relations, he tells them how far we have come. “Our world is different. We live in a different world. It’s a better place. It is a better place. The fear is gone. And I think all of us in America today, we’re a little more human.”