Like many of you, I watched Sunday as Congressman John Lewis, ill with cancer, joined in the commemoration of the 55th anniversary of the voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, when a 25 year-old Lewis almost lost his life after his skull was fractured by Alabama state troopers.

I remember seeing the frightful video of that march later that day on tv. I also recall watching President Johnson give his speech to the joint session of Congress a few days later when he introduced the Voting Rights Act. He ended his speech by declaring, in his Texas twang, “We shall overcome.”

I thought about reading more about those events the old fashioned way – in my copy of Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire, but I didn’t.

A few hours later, I went to the Meadowbrook Swim Club.

Whom did I run into? Taylor Branch.

He added these details.

The only network to air film of the assault on the marchers was ABC. That night, it cut into a movie, Judgment at Nuremberg.

Spencer Taylor, as one of the judges at the Nazi war crimes trial, had just speculated about how the little guy could stand up to the Nazi government.

That day in Alabama, hundreds of African-Americans had done just that.

Both of us knew that President Johnson, while walking up the aisle of the House of Representatives chamber after giving his speech, had spoken to Congressman Emanuel Celler, chair of the committee that would consider the bill LBJ had just introduced. “Hold hearings on my bill at night and pass it sooner,” LBJ urged Celler.

Taylor told me that four months later, at the signing of the Voting Rights Act, Johnson told Celler, “Now you need to pass my immigration bill.”

I told Taylor that one of my proudest accomplishments as a legislator is that I have introduced and enacted legislation protecting the right to vote.