At age 25, Lewis and other protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge were greeted by heavily armed state and local police officers who attacked them with sticks, fracturing Lewis’s skull.
At 10 am local time Sunday, a military honor guard will escort Lewis’s body across the bridge and the public is invited to watch the procession as it travels from the Brown Chapel AME Church to the bridge. Lewis’s family is asking attendees to cover their faces and mouths.
The day that Lewis and protesters initially crossed the bridge became known as “Bloody Sunday” and galvanized American support for the 1965 Voting Rights Act that was enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
“I gave him a little blood on that bridge,” Lewis said years later. “I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death.”
The march has been recreated many times on its anniversary of March 7, 1965. In 2015, President Barack Obama marked the 50th anniversary of the march by delivering a speech at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the following year, protesters received a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor in Congress.
Lewis served as the United States Representative for Georgia’s 5th Congressional District for more than three decades and was widely considered the moral conscience of Congress due to his incarnation of the non-violent fight for civil rights for decades. He was known for getting into “trouble” and, by his own count, the congressman was arrested more than 40 times during his days of civil rights activism.
In the week since his death, Democratic lawmakers have asked President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to pass legislation that expands voting rights in honor of Lewis’ legacy. At the same time, calls to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge have been renewed in honor of the congressman, which includes a petition with more than 500,000 signatures. The bridge’s namesake, Edmund Pettus, was a Confederate general and leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.
Lewis visited the bridge earlier this year to mark the 55th anniversary of the historic march. In an emotional scene, Lewis joined Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress to commemorate the crucial moment for African-Americans.
“It is good to be in Selma, Alabama once again,” Lewis said as he spoke to the crowd gathered on the bridge. “Take a little walk to try to dramatize the need for the rights of all our people to participate in the democratic process.”
CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi, Devan Cole, Suzanne Malveaux, Lauren Fox, Faith Karimi, Brandon Griggs, Jim Acosta, and Haley Byrd contributed to this report.
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