The body of U.S. congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis will be carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama Sunday.
The event at the place where he and other voting rights demonstrators were beaten in 1965 on a day known as “Bloody Sunday” begins the second of six days of memorials for Lewis, who died July 17 at the age 80, after a yearlong battle with advanced-stage pancreatic cancer.
Later Sunday, Lewis’ body will be taken to Alabama’s capital, Montgomery, where Mayor Steven Reed is encouraging people to line the sidewalks on the final leg of the journey. Officials are asking the public to wear facemasks and socially distance.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey ordered flags to be flown at half-staff on Saturday and Sunday in honor of Lewis.
During the nearly weeklong memorial events, Lewis' body will lie in state at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta and the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced last week that visitors could pay their respects to Lewis at the U.S. Capitol Monday and Tuesday.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the public viewing will take place outside the Capitol building instead of in the Capitol Rotunda as is traditional. Social distancing will be “strictly enforced” and facemasks will be required.
The Georgia Democrat will be the second Black lawmaker to lie in state at the Capitol. Congressman Elijah Cummings, who died last year, was the first.
Lewis’ family said there will also be a procession through Washington this week and said members of the public will be able to pay their respects in a “socially-distant manner.”
Lewis’ funeral will be held Thursday at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was once the pastor. Following the service, which will be private, Lewis will be interred at South View Cemetery in Atlanta.
Two memorial services were held for Lewis Saturday in Alabama.
Dr. Jack Hawkins Jr., university chancellor, speaks behind the casket of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., during a service at Troy University, July 25, 2020, in Troy, Ala.
At the public service at Troy University, five siblings and a great-nephew spoke of Lewis as a loving and fearless family man.
"He'd gravitate toward the least of us," said brother Henry "Grant" Lewis. "He worked a lifetime to help others."
Brother Samuel said his mother had warned John “not to get in trouble, not to get in the way.” Samuel Lewis added that his brother did not heed their mother’s warning, saying, “We all know that John got in trouble, got in the way, but it was a good trouble.”
Ethel Mae Tyner, sister of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., dries her eyes during a service celebrating "The Boy from Troy" at Troy University, July 25, 2020, in Troy, Ala.
The Lewis siblings reminded the crowd of their brother's famous injunction to make "good trouble" — ruffling feathers when it was for a righteous cause.
Lewis had wanted to attend Troy University, in Troy, Alabama, his birthplace, but was denied admission to what was then a whites-only school.
Lewis, who as a young boy preached to the chickens on his family’s farm, eventually earned a degree from Fisk University, in religion and philosophy. Years later, Troy University bestowed an honorary doctoral degree on Lewis.
Senator Doug Jones from Alabama said the current crop of protesters “are protesting peacefully, nonviolently,” as Lewis did during the civil rights movement.
U.S. President Donald Trump “paints them all with a broad brush and calls them thugs, but he is wrong,” he said, “They are patriots who want America to move forward to a nation of equals together.”
At Troy University, Lewis lay in repose as visitors paid their respects. Later Saturday, a private ceremony honored him at a chapel in Selma, Alabama, ahead of another public viewing.
FILE - U.S. Rep. John Lewis speaks to the crowd as they cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Sunday, March 1, 2020, in Selma, Ala.
Lewis rose to fame as a leader of the modern-day American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. At 23, he worked closely with King and was the last surviving speaker from the August 1963 March on Washington where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
The civil rights movement led Lewis into a career in politics. He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and to Congress in 1986, calling the latter victory “the honor of a lifetime.” He served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia’s fifth district.