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John Lewis: civil rights leader's body arrives at US Capitol to lie in state John Lewis: voice of civil rights leader rings out one final time at lying-in-state
(about 5 hours later)
Late congressman becomes the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda Late congressman becomes the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol
The body of the late John Lewis arrived in the Rotunda of the US Capitol, where he will lie in state as lawmakers pay tribute to the longtime Georgia lawmaker and leader of the civil rights movement. John Lewis was a gentle man but a stentorian speechmaker. On Monday, for the last time, his courageous voice echoed in the halls of the Capitol and brought all who heard it to a standstill.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, led a delegation to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to greet Lewis’s flag-draped casket. The motorcade stopped at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House as it wound through Washington before arriving at the Capitol, where the late congressman becomes the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda. As the recording of Lewis ended, Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, took her seat and the Rotunda erupted in applause. Then Pelosi rose to her feet again and everyone followed her lead. In a perfect circle, the guests stood and clapped the casket draped in the Stars and Stripes on a black catafalque at their centre.
As with others afforded the honor, Lewis’s casket rested on the catafalque built for Abraham Lincoln’s funeral in 1865. They had come to bid farewell to “the conscience of the Congress” who served in the House of Representatives for 33 years. Lewis died on 17 July from pancreatic cancer at the age of 80. On Sunday his remains made one last journey across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he bled for civil rights in 1965.
Pelosi and others will attend a private ceremony in the Rotunda before Lewis’s 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. On Monday the casket arrived in Washington and made four poignant stops: the Martin Luther King memorial, the Lincoln Memorial (where he was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington in 1963), the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (a project that is one of his great legacies) and the new Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House, recognising a movement that gave his career exquisite symmetry. Police could be seen saluting the hearse as it went by.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, was expected to pay his respects. The pair became friends over two decades on Capitol Hill together and Biden’s two terms as vice-president to Barack Obama, the first black president who awarded Lewis the presidential medal of freedom in 2011. Then the casket was solemnly carried up the US Capitol steps. Lewis, who grew up on a farm in rural Alabama in the Jim Crow south, became the first Black member of Congress to lie in state in the US Capitol rotunda, resting on a catafalque previously used for Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and the supreme court justice Thurgood Marshall.
Notably absent from the ceremonies was Donald Trump, who publicly jousted with Lewis. Lewis once called Trump an an illegitimate president and chided him for stoking racial discord. Trump countered by blasting Lewis’s Atlanta district as “crime-infested”. Trump said he would not go to the Capitol, but Mike Pence was scheduled to pay his respects later on Monday. The paradoxes of the American experiment were manifest as statues of the slave-owning presidents George Washington and Andrew Jackson, and a bust of the civil rights leader King, looked on in the magnificent building constructed with enslaved labour.
Just ahead of the ceremonies, the House passed a bill to establish a new federal commission to study conditions that affect black men and boys. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, offered a eulogy. “America’s original sin of slavery was allowed to fester for far too long,” he said. “It left a long wake of pain, violence, and brokenness that has taken great efforts from great heroes to address.
Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Karen Bass of California, were seen sporting “Good Trouble” face masks, a nod to one of Lewis’s favorite sayings. “John’s friend Dr Martin Luther King Jr famously said ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’. But that is never automatic. History only bent toward what’s right because people like John paid the price to help bend it.”
The tributes 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 civil rights era. McConnell is currently blocking a vote on extending the newly renamed John Lewis Voting Rights Act, as well as acting as chief enabler of Donald Trump’s conservative agenda. Asked at the White House if he intends to pay his respects to Lewis, the president said tersely: “No, I won’t be going. No.” Trump and Lewis had fierce disagreements. But his election rival, Joe Biden, did come to the Rotunda with his wife, Jill.
The son of sharecroppers, Lewis was among the original Freedom Riders, a group of young activists who boarded commercial buses and traveled through the segregated Jim Crow south. They were assaulted and battered along the way, by both citizens and 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. Those guests present on Monday sat physically distanced from one another and wearing face masks, some of which bore Lewis’s celebrated phrase, “Good trouble”, taken from his exhortation: “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
In Selma, Alabama, on 7 March 1965, Lewis suffered a beating at the hands of an Alabama state trooper. He was at the head of hundreds of protesters who attempted to march to the Alabama capitol to demand access to the voting booth. Pelosi, wearing black, with a US flag mask lowered around her neck, paid tribute to his lifelong fight against segregation and for racial justice. “Here in Congress, John was revered and beloved on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the Capitol,” she said. “We knew that he always worked on the side of the angels – and now, we know that he is with them.”
The marchers completed the journey weeks later under the protection of federal authorities. Lyndon B Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on 6 August of that year. And as if she were standing in the chamber, she said: “It is my personal privilege, right now, for me to yield, to our beloved colleague, the distinguished gentleman from Georgia, Congressman John Lewis.”
Lewis spoke of those critical months for the rest of his life as he championed voting rights, and he returned to Selma many times for commemorations at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The Rotunda was hushed as that familiar, fiery voice resounded once more. On the recording, Lewis said: “As young people, you must understand that there are forces that want to take us back to another period. But you must say that we’re not going back, we’ve made too much progress
“The vote is precious. It is almost sacred,” he said. “It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy.” “There may be some setbacks, some delays, some disappointment, but you must never, ever give up or give in. You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. That is your calling, that is your mission, that is your moral obligation, that is your mandate.”
Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the last time on Sunday, on a horse-drawn carriage before a hearse transported him to the Alabama capitol, where he lay in repose, becoming one of the few citizens who was not a former governor to have such an honor. He was escorted by state troopers, this time with black officers in their ranks. After the applause, there was a rousing rendition of Amazing Grace from Wintley Phipps, a singer and education activist. Wreaths were laid ahead of a public viewing on the Capitol steps, which Vice-President Mike Pence is set to attend.
Lewis will have a private funeral on Thursday at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist church, which King once led. John-Miles Lewis stood before his father’s casket. Pelosi, a Catholic, made the sign of the cross and blew a kiss to this lion of the “greatest generation” of the civil rights struggle – a generation now slipping away.