Representative for Civil Rights Corps icon John Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia, who died in his 80s on July 17 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the last time on Sunday.
On Sunday she found him crossing alone, instead of being on the arm of civil rights and political leaders, after his coffin was loaded on top of a horse-drawn carriage that was returning on the route through Selma from the Methodist Episcopal Church Africana de la Capilla Marrón, where the 1965 march began.
As the car approached the bridge, members of the crowd yelled, “Thank you, John Lewis!” and “Good problem!” the phrase Lewis used to describe his entanglements with the white police during the civil rights movement.
JOHN LEWIS MEMORIAL: FAMILY RELEASES DETAILS OF THE SIX-DAY CELEBRATION OF HIS LIFE
Some of the crowd sang the gospel song “Woke up this morning with my mind on Jesus.” Later, some viewers sang the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” and other gospel songs.
The wagon rolled on a carpet of rose petals, stopping on the bridge over the Alabama River in the summer heat so that family members could walk behind it. On the south side of the bridge, where Lewis was hit by Alabama state soldiers in 1965, family members placed red roses on which the car rolled, marking the place where Lewis shed his blood and sustained a head injury. .
When a military honor guard lifted Lewis’s coffin from the horse-drawn carriage in a hearse, Alabama state soldiers, including some African-Americans, saluted Lewis.
Lewis’s body was taken to the Alabama Capitol in the afternoon to rest, retracing the route protesters took in the days after Bloody Sunday to demand justice from Alabama Governor George Wallace.
The bridge became a milestone in the fight for racial justice when Lewis and other civil rights protesters were beaten there 55 years ago on “Bloody Sunday,” a key event that helped boost support for the passage of the Electoral Rights. Lewis returned to Selma each March in commemoration.
Lewis left his family’s farm in Pike County, Alabama, in the 1950s to begin the fight against segregation and racial oppression.
Lewis served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia’s 5th Congressional District from 1987 until his death.
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A series of memories began Saturday in Troy, Alabama, Lewis’ hometown, to pay tribute to the late congressman and his legacy. He will be in state on the United States Capitol this week before his private funeral Thursday at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
