John Lewis, U.S. congressman and sharecropper's son, was civil rights hero

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA.) gestures as he nominates Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. on July 26, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - John Lewis, who died on Friday at age 80, was a hero of the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s who endured beatings by white police and mobs and played an outsized role in American politics for 60 years.

Lewis, an Alabama sharecropper's son elected in 1986 as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia, died after a battle with pancreatic cancer.