On Thursday, a funeral for civil rights icon John Lewis will be held at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, days after the events honoring the late congressman, who died earlier this month at 80 years old.
Lewis left Washington, DC For the last time on Wednesday, after Congressional leaders, political figures and members of the public visited the United States Capitol to bid farewell to the man known as the “Congressional conscience.” Lewis and his family traveled to his adoptive home in Atlanta, Georgia, where he will rest on the State Capitol before his funeral.
How to watch John Lewis’ funeral
- Than: Funeral for civil rights icon John Lewis
- Date: Thursday July 30, 2020
- Hour: 11 am ET
- Location: Ebenezer Baptist Church Horizon Sanctuary in Atlanta, Georgia
- Online streaming: Watch live on CBSN in the player above or on your streaming or mobile device
Lewis helped organize the 1963 March in Washington and served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia’s 5th congressional district for 33 years.
Over the weekend, a service honored Lewis in his hometown of Troy, Alabama, before making his last trip across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, the same bridge that he crossed over 50 years ago on the march to Montgomery. Lewis suffered a skull fracture and was among dozens of people injured after police attacked protesters. That day, March 7, 1965, would be known as “Bloody Sunday”.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called Lewis the “Trojan boy” when the two met in 1958, according to the Associated Press, and their meeting started Lewis’s life of activism. In 1961, Lewis was just 21 years old when he joined the Freedom Riders traveling by public transit to Alabama in an effort to integrate the bus ride.
He remained a civil rights advocate until the end of his life, and told Gayle King, co-host of “CBS This Morning” in June, that he believed the national protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death were a point of inflection.
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