when he was denied entry to university -- this weekend urged the Progressive Labour Party to "keep fighting for the prize''.

In a moving address detailing his non-violent battle for human rights, Rep.

Lewis said: "Don't give up PLP, don't give in and don't give out. Hold on and keep the faith.'' The more than 300 PLP members attending their 27th annual conference banquet at Marriott's Castle Harbour Resort hotel on Saturday night heard his stirring recollection of a time when blacks "could not go into town for a coke and a burger''.

As a young boy raising chickens on his father's farm in a small town in Alabama, Rep. Lewis said he would have labelled "crazy'' anyone who told him he would one day be elected to the United States Congress.

Before he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1986, he was beaten to the ground in numerous demonstrations and arrested 40 times.

Angry mobs set upon him and other participants in the "freedom rides'' of the 1960s to challenge segregation at interstate bus terminals.

"I was whipped, beaten, left laying unconscious in a pool of blood, and arrested and jailed,'' he said.

The Georgia Democrat was re-elected to his fifth term in Congress last week in US elections which saw the Republicans take over the House and Senate.

"I have learned from you what it is like to be caught in the Loyal Opposition,'' he said.

"But I don't think you are going to be in the Loyal Opposition any more and we (the Democrats) are not going to be in it for too long.'' He advised: "Organise the unorganised. Get the un-registered to register and get the people to vote like they have never voted before...

"Too many of us went to jail, were beaten and shed blood for us to sit on our bottoms and do nothing. We all must be soldiers.'' After passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, there were five blacks in Congress, he noted. "Today there are 40, and 7,000 elected black officers,'' he said.

"We have made progress, we have made distance, but there is still a long way to go before we get to creating the `Beloved Community' of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior.'' Along with Dr. King, Rep. Lewis is considered one of the "Big Six'' leaders of the civil rights movement.

"What happens to the people here affects us all. We're all in the same boat and not any of us are going to get out until we all get out together,'' he said.

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement from 1963 to 1966, Rep. Lewis headed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which was largely responsible for the lunch-counter sit-ins, marches and other activities in the struggle for civil rights.

His fight culminated in the Voting Rights Bill, passed after one of the most dramatic nonviolent protests of the movement, Bloody Sunday, during which Alabama state troopers attacked marchers with bull whips, tear gas and sticks.

Rep. Lewis, 54, attended Fisk University where he got a degree in religion and went on to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Tennessee.