WASHINGTON — The casket containing the late Rep. John Lewis arrived at the U.S. Capitol, where his body will lie in state as lawmakers pay tribute to the longtime Georgia lawmaker and icon of the civil rights movement.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) led a delegation Monday to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to greet Lewis’ flag-draped casket. A motorcade carrying the body stopped at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House as it wound through Washington before arriving at the Capitol, where Lewis became the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda.
Pelosi and others will attend a private ceremony in the Rotunda before Lewis’ body is moved to the steps on the Capitol’s east side for a public viewing, an unusual sequence required because the COVID-19 pandemic has closed the Capitol to the public. Inside the Rotunda and outdoors, signs welcomed visitors with a reminder that masks would be required.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who served in Congress alongside Lewis, is expected to visit the Capitol to pay his respects. The pair became friends over their two decades on Capitol Hill together and Biden’s two terms as vice president under Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, who awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.
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Former President Obama addresses mourners during the funeral for Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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Former President George W. Bush speaks during the funeral for Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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Former President Clinton speaks during the funeral for Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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A woman stands during the funeral for Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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A military honor guard moves the casket of Rep. John Lewis into Ebenezer Baptist Church for his funeral in Atlanta. (Brynn Anderson / Associated Press)
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Mourners stand outside Ebenezer Baptist Church during the funeral of Rep. John Lewis in Atlanta. (Brynn Anderson / Associated Press)
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Samuel Lewis, brother of John Lewis, attends the congressman’s funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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Tybre Faw was moved by the reading of John Lewis’ favorite poem, “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, during the funeral service for the late congressman at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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Mourners attend the funeral service for Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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Civil rights leader the Rev. James Lawson speaks during the funeral service for Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms sits with her husband, Derek, during the funeral for the Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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Members of the Congressional Black Caucus surround the flag-draped casket of civil rights pioneer Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who died July 17, as he lies in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Monday, July 27, 2020. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)
(Jonathan Ernst/Pool Photo)
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Members of the U.S. Capitol Police honor guard stand near the flag-draped casket of Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., on Monday in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (Matt McClain/Pool Photo)
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The flag-draped casket of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., is carried by a joint services military honor guard up the steps of the East front steps of Capitol Hill in Washington Monday. (Susan Walsh/Associated Press)
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The hearse with the flag-draped casket of Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., drives on 16th Street, renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza, near the White House in Washington, DC.. ( Alex Brandon/Pool Photo)
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People pay respects to Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., as he lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda, Monday in Washington. (Shawn Thew/Pool Photo)
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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks to family members in the Rotunda of the U.S., Capitol, during a service for Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. Monday in Washington. (Matt McClain/Pool Photo)
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John-Miles Lewis touches the casket of his father, the late Rep. John Lewis, D-GA, a key figure in the civil rights movement in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. (Matt McClain/Pool Photo)
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Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-NY, raises his hands as Amazing Grace is played during the ceremony for the late Rep. John Lewis in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. (Matt McClain/Pool Photo)
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Supreme Court associate justice Sonia Sotomayor pauses at the flag-draped casket of Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., as he lies in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington Monday. (Shawn Thew/Pool Photo)
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A man places flower petals on the Edmund Pettus Bridge ahead of Rep. John Lewis’ casket. (Brynn Anderson/AP Photo)
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Fraternity members sing in front of the casket of the late Rep. John Lewis, during a service celebrating “The Boy from Troy”. (Brynn Anderson/AP)
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The body of Congressman John Lewis arrives at the Alabama Capitol. (Julie Bennett/AP)
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With the Capitol Dome in the background, U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2017. (Lawrence Jackson / Associated Press)
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John Lewis, then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is beaten by an Alabama state trooper as the police break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., with billy clubs and violence March 7, 1965. Lewis’ skull was fractured. (Associated Press)
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Leading a 50th anniversary march in Selma, Ala., in 2015, President Obama holds hands with Rep. John Lewis and Amelia Boynton Robinson, who were both beaten on “Bloody Sunday” in 1965. (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)
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President Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rep. John Lewis during a 2011 ceremony in the East Room of the White House. (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)
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Rep. John Lewis poses for a portrait ahead of the 2017 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Lewis spoke at the festival about “March,” a graphic memoir trilogy based on the civil rights movement and Lewis’ life in Alabama. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Rep. John Lewis is arrested by U.S. Capitol Police during a 2013 demonstration calling for the House to take up immigration reform legislation. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
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Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), center, and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), right, co-chairs of the civil rights task force of the Congressional Black Caucus, join other members of the House to express disappointment in the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision that a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
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Rep. John Lewis speaks to gun control activists outside the Capitol as House Democrats stage a 2016 sit-in on the House floor to demand a vote for gun control measures days after a massacre at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)
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Rep. John Lewis speaks in 2013 during the 50th anniversary commemoration of the March on Washington. (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)
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Rep. John Lewis stands in front of a quote of his in the Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library. (Mark Humphrey / Associated Press)
Notably absent from the ceremonies was President Trump, who publicly jousted with Lewis. The congressman once called Trump an illegitimate president and chided him for stoking racial discord. Trump countered by blasting Lewis’ Atlanta congressional district as “crime-infested.”
Just ahead of the ceremonies Monday, the House passed a bill to establish a new federal commission to study conditions affecting Black men and boys.
Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Reps. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.), Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), were seen sporting “Good Trouble” face masks, a nod to one of Lewis’ favorite pieces of advice.
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic,” Lewis tweeted in 2018. “Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
The tributes Monday were the latest in a series of public remembrances for the 80-year-old Alabama native who helped lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the peak of the civil rights era.
The son of sharecroppers, Lewis was among the original Freedom Riders, a group of young activists who boarded commercial passenger buses and traveled through the segregated Jim Crow South. They were assaulted and battered at many stops along the way, by citizens as well as authorities. Lewis was the youngest and last living of the featured speakers for the March on Washington in 1963, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
In Selma, Ala., on March 7, 1965, Lewis suffered a beating at the hands of an Alabama state trooper that became one of the defining moments of his life. He was at the head of hundreds of civil rights protesters who attempted to march from the Black Belt city to the Alabama Capitol to demand access to the voting booth.
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 Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on Aug. 6 of that year.
Lewis spoke of those critical months for the rest of his life as he championed voting rights as a foundation of democracy, and he returned to Selma many times for commemorations at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where baton-wielding officers had brutalized Lewis and the marchers.
“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.”
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 his body lay in repose, becoming one of the few citizens who wasn’t a former governor to have such an honor. 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 voting rights marchers he refused to meet.
Lewis already has had a public funeral in his hometown of Troy, Ala. He will have a private funeral Thursday at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which King once led.
