Family members, religious leaders and local officials remembered John Lewis’s humility, kindness and enduring quest for a more just society on Saturday, the first of six days of tributes honoring the life of the late civil rights leader and congressman.
His young great-nephew, Jaxon Lewis Brewster, called Lewis his “hero.”
“It’s up to us to keep his legacy alive,” the child said.
Lewis (D-Ga.) died July 17 at the age of 80 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Lewis’s flag-draped casket was carried by men in masks, and attendees were seated six feet apart, a reminder that the country is still in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which has cost the lives of nearly 150,000 Americans, disproportionately from low-income, minority communities.
The memorial Saturday honored the 17-term congressman and son of a sharecropper. In honors afforded to a select few, Lewis will lie in state in two state capitals — Montgomery and Atlanta — and the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, where the nation has paid tribute to past presidents, lawmakers and other distinguished citizens, including civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks in 2005.
On Sunday, Lewis’s casket will be part of a procession across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Lewis will be accompanied by a military honor guard on his final crossing of the bridge.
On March 7, 1965, Lewis, then the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, led some 600 protesters in a march across the bridge for civil rights. State troopers beat the demonstrators, and Lewis suffered a cracked skull on what became known as Bloody Sunday.
Within months, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which was meant to end the obstacles preventing black people from voting.
A funeral for Lewis will be held Thursday at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.
Lewis’s family called the memorial event on Saturday “The Boy from Troy,” the nickname King gave Lewis when they first met.
He lay in repose at Troy University, where he sought admission when it was an all-white college and was denied. Years later, the university awarded him an honorary doctoral degree.
“He became a figure known around the world for action, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, confronting Alabama state troopers,” said Troy Mayor Jason Reeves. “And now Alabama state troopers will lead his body around this state as we celebrate his life.”
Lewis was brought to Selma for a memorial church service Saturday evening.
Songs and recollections marked the event at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church. Martin Luther King III imagined a reunion in heaven involving Lewis, his father and others who fought for civil rights.
Martin Luther King III recalled the 2013 Supreme Court decision invalidating a crucial component of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, ruling that Congress had not taken into account the nation’s racial progress when singling out certain states for federal oversight. King suggested renaming the House-passed bill to restore those protections for Lewis. The legislation, which passed in December, has languished in the GOP-led Senate.
Earlier in the evening, Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) said, “We have a lot more bridges to cross without John,” and later added, “He gave us the roadmap. All we have to do is dare to follow it.”
At the service in Troy, Henry Grant Lewis recalled his last conversation with his brother the night before he died. The congressman was, as always, concerned about others, asking how the family was doing and wanting his brother to tell them he’d asked about them.
Henry Grant Lewis also shared an exchange he’d had with his brother when he was first sworn in to Congress. The new lawmaker looked up at his family watching from the gallery above the House floor and flashed his brother a thumbs up.
Afterward, Henry Grant Lewis asked his brother what he was thinking when he made that gesture.
“I was thinking,” he recalled his brother saying, “this is a long way from the cotton fields of Alabama.”