Georgia congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, who died late Friday at age 80, knew about affecting change through policy-making. When Lewis was one of the marquee speakers at the monumental March on Washington in 1963, that event led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964; when Lewis participated in the seminal Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965, that gathering led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Jim Zwerg served as a pivotal Freedom Rider with Lewis in 1961, the year he also met the Rev. C.T. Vivian, another of Martin Luther King Jr.s lieutenants. Vivian, who died at age 95 on Friday morning, was more of a top-notch teacher for Zwerg, as Lewis was more of a prodigious peer.

The Freedom Riders were mostly college students determined to desegregate interstate travel in the South where the custom was to separate passengers by race on buses and in terminals. At that time, Zwerg was a 22-year-old white guy who left an all-white area in Wisconsin to experience the segregated South as an exchange student at Fisk University, a historically black school in Nashville.

A classic walk a mile in someone elses shoes.

Lewis, also at Fisk, inspired him to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement, to get into good trouble, as Lewis preferred to call joining the cause.

Everyone respected his total commitment and discipline to non-violence, said Zwerg, now 81. John had a deep commitment to faith.

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