John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the last time on Sunday, as memories continued for the civil rights leader and congressman.
Originally from Pike County, Alabama, Lewis died on July 17 at age 80, several months after announcing advanced pancreatic cancer.
The bridge became a milestone in the fight for racial justice when Lewis and other protesters were beaten there 55 years ago on Bloody Sunday, a key event in the fight for voting rights for African Americans.
On Sunday, state soldiers and policemen stood along the sidewalks with barricades as Lewis’s body was transported.
Frank and Ellen Hill had driven more than four hours from Monroe, Louisiana, to see the procession. Frank Hill, 60, said he remembered seeing images of Lewis and other beaten civil rights protesters.
“I had to go back and see John Lewis cross the bridge one last time,” Hill told the Associated Press. “It’s fun to see the state troopers here to honor and respect him rather than beat him up.”
Calls to rename the bridge for Lewis are on the rise.
On Sunday, Kerry Kennedy, a human rights defender and daughter of former US Attorney General, Senator and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, with whom Lewis forged a strong friendship, told the Guardian: “I think it would be great. because Edmund Pettus was a terrible white supremacist and there should be nothing with his name. “
Pettus was a Confederate attorney and general who became a United States Senator and Leader in the Ku Klux Klan.
“It would be a symbol for Selma and for our country and for the world that we recognize the violence of the past,” Kennedy said, “and we are going to atone for it and we are on the way to becoming a more perfect union.” – one where all people are respected and where each person is treated with dignity. “
After the Selma ceremonies, Lewis’s body was to be taken to the Alabama State Capitol to rest.
A series of events began Saturday in Lewis’s hometown of Troy, Alabama. He will be in state at the United States Capitol in Washington next week before a private funeral Thursday at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, which was once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
