Three former presidents gathered to honor Congressman John Lewis at his funeral in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday, completing a week of memorial services for the longtime lawmaker and civil rights icon.
Former President Barack Obama delivered enthusiastic praise celebrating Lewis’s life. “He, as much as anyone else in our history, brought this country a little closer to our highest ideals,” Obama said.
He addressed the issue that defined Lewis’s legacy and asked Congress to act on voting rights. “Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law he was willing to die for,” Obama said before a standing ovation at the funeral. He added: “John would not want us to stop there. Once we approve it, we should keep marching to make it even better,” listing new provisions like automatic registration and making Election Day a national holiday.
Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also paid tribute to Lewis, who died earlier this month at age 80.
Bush, the first of the living presidents to pay tribute to Lewis, said Americans live in a country that is better today because of the late congressman.
“John Lewis always looked outward, not inward. He always thought of others. He always believed in preaching the gospel, word and deed, insisting that hatred and fear had to be answered with love and hope,” he said. Bush. “John Lewis believed in the Lord. He believed in humanity, and he believed in America.”
Clinton noted that Lewis “left us with marching orders” in his op-ed in the New York Times, published on the day of his funeral. In the article, Lewis urged Americans to continue getting into “good trouble.” The former president suggested that Americans honor this request: “Say hello, dress up, and move on.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reflected on Lewis’s 33 years in Congress, during which he represented Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, and the lessons it taught the legislature. “When he spoke, people listened. When he led, people followed him. We love him very much,” Pelosi said. “We say goodbye to this person, our leader, our friend.”
The funeral follows almost a week of tributes, including a memorial service in Troy Alabama, Saturday and a final journey across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on Sunday, the same bridge where he was hit by Alabama state police police during the march to Montgomery on March 7, 1965, which became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Lewis’s coffin then traveled to Washington, DC, where he was commemorated at a service on the United States Capitol and was the first black lawmaker in be exposed in burning chapel at the Capitol Rotunda.
Lewis was the youngest person to speak at the 1963 March in Washington, and was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. He spoke to CBS News in June about his activism in the 1960s.
“Yes, they beat me, they left me bloody and unconscious. But I never became bitter or hostile, I never gave up. I think that somehow and somehow if it is necessary to use our bodies to help redeem the soul of a nation then we should do it, “Lewis said.
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