Moorestown Friends’ senior Ali Sabir with Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way as he accepted the John Lewis Youth Leadership Award for civic engagement.
Moorestown resident Ali Sabir earned the John Lewis Youth Leadership Award for New Jersey in December.
Presented by Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way, Sabir’s nationally recognized award celebrates outstanding civic engagement initiatives. Created by the National Association of Secretaries of State in 2021, it commemorates the legacy of the late civil rights icon John Lewis.
“When talking about civil rights leaders who inspire change, regardless of age, regardless of circumstance, he’s one of the biggest,” Sabir – a senior at Moorestown Friends – said of Lewis.
Lewis participated in the first mass lunch-counter sit-ins to protest segregation in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1960, according to the website for the United States Civil Rights Trail. The following year, he joined the original 13 Freedom Riders, groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in bus trips through the South to protest segregated bus terminals.
Lewis was a keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August of 1963. That same year, he became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and as its chairman, was integral to the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, an effort to promote voting among Blacks in the state.
Lewis and the late Hosea Williams led more than 600 peaceful protestors across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. The destination of their march for voting rights was the state capital of Montgomery, but troopers attacked them at the bridge in a violent confrontation that became known as Bloody Sunday.
Lewis was a Georgia Congressman from 1986 until his passing in 2020. In 2011, he was granted the highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, by former President Barack Obama.
“To win an award that is named after his (Lewis’) legacy and that is part of his legacy was incredibly meaningful for me,” Sabir acknowledged. “This also serves to highlight the importance of civic education, as well as focusing on the kind of civics that brings people together.
“Civics is often used to divide people, but an emphasis on a new kind of civics, one that is centered around solidarity, is a path forward for our country.”
Sabir partnered with the Friends School history department in 2022 to create Civics Week, a student-led curriculum change that has expanded into neighboring districts. It’s a way for students to learn civics through a local lens, he explained, where lessons on things like campaign finance or town government connect directly to the community.
Sabir has been a youth ambassador for the U.S. Department of Justice division on civil rights, as well as a fellow in Andy Kim’s 2024 U.S. Senate campaign. He’s the student representative for Moorestown’s Better Together Advisory Committee, co-founder of the TEDxMoorestown Friends School Club, and helped start a youth ambassador program for Prepare2Vote, a nonprofit founded by Nancy Youngkin to encourage civic engagement through education.
“It’s easy to support a young person who wants to change the world in a way that is possible,” noted Youngkin of Sabir, whom she nominated for the Lewis award. “Ali understands that when people know how government impacts them, they are more likely to be civically engaged and vote, which is the mission of Prepare2Vote.
“Too often the people most affected by issues shy away from bringing a voice to the table,” she pointed out. “We’d like to change that. And we’re honored to have Ali and his peers joining us in that mission in our Youth Ambassador program.”
