When Comic-Con takes over the San Diego Convention Center, you can walk down aisles jam-packed with booths and bodies and easily count five Dr. Whos, three Wolverines and that one guy in an ingenious Transformers costume (you can even get your picture taken with the hulk, Lou Ferrigno).
Among all the fantastical figures parading down San Diego's streets this year, there was also an elegant and modest man who has earned the moniker "hero" in real life.
John Lewis was born the son of sharecroppers in rural Alabama. When he got old enough, his parents demanded he worked on the farm, instead he hid under the porch so he could sneak out to the waiting school bus and get an education.
Lewis went on to be known as one of the big six of the civil rights movement, starting as a leader organizing student run sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville.
Lewis kept going, becoming chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC. He spoke alongside Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington. He was one of the original freedom riders, enduring bombings and bodily beatings. He has said that in the course of his non-violent protests, he sometimes felt he was going to die.
