REP. JOHN LEWIS’s words can roll low and slow, like a rumble of rhythm, until the volcanic rhetoric starts to burble and blow. Then, in an emotional spitfire of syllables, his words rise as if scaling a mountaintop path.

Lewis first met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a teenager in the ’50s, and their paths along the long march to freedom would often cross — most historically at the 1963 March on Washington, where Lewis was the youngest speaker at 23, and where King would deliver his towering “I Have a Dream” speech; and again in the 1965 protests of a sweltering Selma.

And in 1968, the day before he died on that Memphis balcony, King spoke of going up the mountain, like Moses on Mount Nebo, and of seeing the Promised Land, like the prophet of Deuteronomy. “I may not get there with you,” King pealed like a church bell. “But … we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

King spoke to those who would carry the message forward, like torch-bearers of liberty’s beacon. And one of those keepers of the flame ever since has been John Lewis (who is depicted in the Oscar-nominated film “Selma”). And Lewis continues to urge others to take up that standard.

Today, as we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, I am reminded of sharing a stage with Lewis and his aide Andrew Aydin last year in Washington, as these two co-authors spoke of their acclaimed graphic novel, “March: Book One,” illustrated by Nate Powell. (“Book Two” comes out Wednesday.) And I am reminded that toward the beginning of our Q-and-A session with the Awesome Con audience, a young activist stepped to the mike with a question for the congressman. She had her own fight to fight, her own beacon to hoist. And before her last syllable had even cleared her throat, Lewis sensed the moment and her meaning, and delivered an impassioned answer in fewer than 50 words of mobilized clarity. Of this scene, some in the crowd would tweet their cheers, or shed a tear. Lewis was directly exhorting the next generations.

Here, in a nod to this holiday, is how that brief scene unfolded:

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