Biography of civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis in the works

A biography of late civil rights pioneer and former Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), which will draw upon hundreds of interviews and classified documents and files, is in the works.

Publishing company Simon & Schuster announced Tuesday that historian David Greenberg’s “John Lewis: A Life” is scheduled for release in fall 2024, according to Associated Press.

Simon & Schuster said the book will present an “a comprehensive, authoritative life of John Lewis, from his extraordinary contributions to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s to his emergence as ‘the conscience of the Congress’ and national icon.”

Greenberg, a professor of history and journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, will use Lewis’s FBI files and material from an unfinished project by Lewis’s friend and fellow activist, Archie Allen, the AP reported.

In a statement, Greenberg said he began writing Lewis’s story while the civil rights pioneer was still alive and received his approval for it. 

“Obviously I admired John Lewis at the start of this project,” Greenberg said in a statement. “But in the course of it I came to see him as a more complicated person than his public image, and also as a more pragmatic and canny politician than I think most people realized.”

Greenberg has also written “Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image” and “Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency.”

Lewis, 80, died in July 2020 after battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a year. 

The Hill has reached out to Simon & Schuster for comment and more information.