Rufus Andrew Lewis was born on November 30, 1906. He was the son of Lula and Jerry Lewis in Montgomery, Alabama. He was the youngest of four children. Mr. & Mrs. Obe Thomas raised him on the westside of Montgomery. 

He attended Alabama State Teachers Junior College. He was a graduate of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, where he earned an A.B. Degree in Business Administration in 1931. He taught school in Evergreen, Alabama and Mt. Meigs, Alabama before joining Alabama Sate Teachers’ college, now Alabama State University, in 1933. He served as athletic coach and as assistant librarian. 

He married Jule Adelaide Clayton in 1935, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Frazzie Clayton. Mr. Lewis and his wife had one daughter, Mrs. Eleanor Lewis Dawkins.  Mrs. Adelaide Lewis was killed in an automobile accident in 1958, while in route to a National Negroe Business Women’s Conference. 

Lewis concerned about Black people having the right to vote launched a voting rights drive. He worked with students at Alabama State Laboratory High School’s Citizenship Club in 1938 and thereafter. By 1948 voting rights became his obsession. 

He is credited with an entire generation of Blacks voting for the first time. He co-founded in 1960 the Alabama Democratic Conference, the Black caucus of the Democratic Party. It was Rufus Lewis that harnessed the “Black Bloc” using strategies of “screening committees” and yellow ballots to guide Black voters. He was the Black Grand Poo Pa! 

Lewis was an active member of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. It was at Dexter that Lewis Chaired the Transportation Committee during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was Lewis who nominated Martin Luther King Jr., a Morehouse Man to become the spokesman for the Montgomery Improvement Association. 

Lewis was invited to the Rose Garden by President Lyndon Johnson to witness the 1965 signing of the Voting Rights Act. He predicted that as a result of that Act Blacks would exercise political muscle and get themselves elected, particularly in local elections. 

In 1974 Lewis was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives, District 77. United States President Jimmy Carter appointed Lewis in 1977 to become the first Black U.S. Marshall of the Middle District of Alabama. He left that position in 1981. 

He was the Dean of Black Politics until he passed on August 19, 1999. He was 92 years old. You can view the historical marker outside his former residence located at 801 Rufus A. Lewis Lane. To many it seems such a shame that a man so wonderful will only live once, but the sages know that “if you live life right, once is all you need!”

 In the words of my dad, “You must honor the chair whether it is sitting, walking or lying down.”