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VOA - World News

The body of late U.S. lawmaker and civil rights activist John Lewis is being flown to his hometown of Atlanta, where it will lie in repose at the Georgia state capitol -- one of the last memorial services before he is buried.

Early Wednesday, Lewis’s flag-draped casket was carried down the U.S. Capitol steps and placed in a hearse as a bipartisan group of lawmakers and members of the public looked on. The casket had rested at the top of the Capitol steps since Monday, so members of the public could pay their respects.

The casket with the body of civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis arrives at the Alabama Capitol, in Montgomery, Alabama, July 26, 2020.

People will be able to do the same later Wednesday, when his casket arrives at the state capitol rotunda in Georgia, following a ceremony in his honor. A private burial service in Atlanta is scheduled for Thursday.

The service is part of a series of public remembrances for Lewis that began over the weekend.

Lewis was the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda in Washington. Last year, the late Rep. Elijah Cummings became the first Black lawmaker to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol when his body laid in state in Statuary Hall, just off the rotunda.

On Sunday, Lewis’s casket was carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where the one-time "Freedom Rider" was among civil rights demonstrators beaten by state troopers in 1965.

Lewis died July 17 at the age of 80. Born to sharecroppers during Jim Crow segregation, he was beaten by Alabama state troopers during the civil rights movement, spoke ahead of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington and was awarded the Medal of Freedom by then-President Barack Obama in 2011.

He spent more than three decades in Congress, and his district included most of Atlanta.