Mourners gathered Tuesday morning at the US Capitol to say their final goodbyes to the late civil rights hero, Rep John Lewis, who died earlier this month at the age of 80.
The longtime congressman passed away on July 17 after losing his battle with pancreatic cancer. On Monday, Lewis became the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda. He will lie in state at the Capitol Building until Tuesday evening.
Images showed Capitol Police bringing out the flag-draped casket containing Lewis’s body for public viewing atop the East Front steps of the US Capitol.
Families had already started gathering and were seen waiting in line at the base of the East Front steps.
US Capitol Police bring out the flag-draped casket containing the body of late Democratic Representative from Georgia John Lewis for public viewing atop the East Front steps of the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, on Tuesday
The casket was positioned in front of dozens of flowers at the East Front Steps of the US Capitol on Tuesday
Mourners gathered Tuesday morning at the US Capitol to say their final goodbyes to Lewis, who died earlier this month at the age of 80
Families were seen taking photos as they waited in line at the base of the East Front steps of the US Capitol on Tuesday
At one point, Reverend Jessie Jackson (right) paid his respects to Lewis by taking a few moments of silence while placing his hands on the casket
One woman is seen holding her right hand over her heart as she closed her eyes while viewing Lewis’s casket on Tuesday
A man is seen standing with others as he places his right hand over his heart while at the base of the East Front steps on Tuesday
People were seen taking images while paying their respects to the late civil right hero on Tuesday
People are seen trying to take an image of Lewis’s flag-draped casket on Tuesday morning
At one point, Reverend Jessie Jackson paid his respects to Lewis by taking a few moments of silence while placing his hands on the casket.
On Monday, congressional leaders praised Lewis as a moral force for the nation in a Capitol Rotunda memorial service.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Lewis the ‘conscience of the Congress’ who was ‘revered and beloved on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the Capitol’.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised the longtime Georgia congressman as a model of courage and a ‘peacemaker’.
‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’ McConnell, a Republican, said, quoting the Rev Martin Luther King Jr. ‘But that is never automatic. History only bent toward what’s right because people like John paid the price.’
Born to sharecroppers during Jim Crow segregation, Lewis was beaten by Alabama state troopers during the civil rights movement, spoke ahead of King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech at the 1963 March on Washington and was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama, in 2011.
Several lawmakers wiped away tears as a recording of the late congressman’s voice echoed off the marble and gilded walls while his casket sat atop the catafalque built for President Abraham Lincoln.
‘You must find a way to get in the way. You must find a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble,’ Lewis intoned in a recorded commencement address he’d delivered in his hometown of Atlanta.
‘Use what you have … to help make our country and make our world a better place, where no one will be left out or left behind. … It is your time.’
People were also able to Lewis’s casket during a public viewing on Monday on the East Front Steps of the Capitol in Washington
On Monday, congressional leaders praised Lewis as a moral force for the nation in a Capitol Rotunda memorial service. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, say farewell at the conclusion of a service for Lewis on Monday
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky speaks during a memorial service for Lewis on Monday
An aerial view of the US Capitol Rotunda shows Lewis’s casket in the center of the room during a memorial service on Monday
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (left) and Sen Tim Scott (right) attend a memorial service for Lewis on Monday
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Lewis the ‘conscience of the Congress’ who was ‘revered and beloved on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the Capitol’
Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, touches the flag-draped casket of the late congressman on Monday
President Donald Trump said Monday that he would not go to the Capitol, but Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen (both pictured)
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus wore masks with the message ‘Good Trouble,’ a nod to Lewis’ signature advice.
Since his passing, there have been several public remembrances for the civil rights hero.
Pelosi, who counted Lewis as a close friend, met his casket earlier Monday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, and Lewis’ motorcade stopped at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House as it wound through Washington before arriving at the Capitol.
The Democratic speaker noted that Lewis, frail with cancer, had come to the newly painted plaza weeks ago to stand ‘in solidarity’ amid nationwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality.
She called the image of Lewis ‘an iconic picture of justice’ and juxtaposed it with another image that seared Lewis into the national memory.
In that frame, ‘an iconic picture of injustice,’ Pelosi said. Lewis is seen collapsed and bleeding near the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, when state troopers beat him and other Black Americans as they demanded voting rights.
Following the Rotunda service, Lewis’s body was moved to the steps on the Capitol’s east side in public view, an unusual sequence required because the pandemic has closed the Capitol to visitors.
Since his passing, there have been several public remembrances for the civil rights hero. Pelosi, who counted Lewis as a close friend, met his casket earlier Monday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland (pictured)
Lewis’s motorcade stopped at Black Lives Matter Plaza (pictured) near the White House as it wound through Washington before arriving at the Capitol
Hundreds gathered at Black Lives Matter Plaza to watch the motorcade drive pass on Monday
The hearse carrying Lewis’s casket also paused in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Monday before arriving at the US Capitol
Late into the night, a long line of visitors formed outside the Capitol as members of the public quietly, and with appropriate socially distant spacing, came to pay their respects to Lewis.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden paid his respects late Monday afternoon. The pair became friends over their two decades on Capitol Hill together and Biden’s two terms as vice president Obama.
Notably absent from the ceremonies was President Donald Trump. Lewis once called Trump an illegitimate president and chided him for stoking racial discord. Trump countered by blasting Lewis’ Atlanta district as ‘crime-infested’.
Trump said Monday that he would not go to the Capitol, but Vice President Mike Pence and his wife paid their respects.
Born near Troy, Alabama, Lewis was among the original Freedom Riders, young activists who boarded commercial passenger buses and traveled through the segregated Jim Crow South in the early 1960s. They were assaulted and battered at many stops, by citizens and authorities alike.
Lewis was the youngest and last-living of those who spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington.
The Bloody Sunday events in Selma two years later forged much of Lewis’ public identity. He was at the head of hundreds of civil rights protesters who attempted to march from the Black Belt city to the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery.
On Sunday, Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the last time on a horse-drawn carriage before an automobile hearse transported him to the Alabama Capitol, where he lay in repose
He was escorted by Alabama state troopers, this time with black officers in their ranks, and his casket stood down the hall from the office where Wallace had peered out of his window at the citizens he refused to meet
The marchers completed the journey weeks later under the protection of federal authorities, but then-Alabama Gov George C. Wallace, an outspoken segregationist at the time, refused to meet the marchers when they arrived at the Capitol. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 6 of that year.
Lewis spoke of those critical months for the rest of his life as he championed voting rights as the foundation of democracy, and he returned to Selma many times for commemorations at the site where authorities had brutalized him and others.
‘The vote is precious. It is almost sacred,’ he said again and again. ‘It is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have in a democracy.’
The Supreme Court scaled back the seminal voting law in 2012; an overhauled version remains bottle-necked on Capitol Hill, with Democrats pushing a draft that McConnell and most of his fellow Republicans oppose. The new version would carry Lewis’ name.
Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the last time Sunday on a horse-drawn carriage before an automobile hearse transported him to the Alabama Capitol, where he lay in repose.
He was escorted by Alabama state troopers, this time with black officers in their ranks, and his casket stood down the hall from the office where Wallace had peered out of his window at the citizens he refused to meet.
After the public viewing ends on Tuesday, Lewis’s body will return to Georgia. He will have a private funeral Thursday at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which Dr King once led.