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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Congressman John Lewis Lain in State at Capitol Rotunda

Marking the first time that the honor has been bestowed on a Black lawmaker, the body of 17-term Georgia Congressman John Lewis arrived Monday to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

WASHINGTON (CN) — Marking the first time that the honor has been bestowed on a Black lawmaker, the body of 17-term Georgia Congressman John Lewis arrived Monday to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

A day earlier, Lewis’ casket forded the Alabama River over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which was lined with rose petals — meant to represent the blood spilled there in 1965 as state troopers attempted to quash a protest by Lewis and other Black civil rights demonstrators. 

Lewis had been one of nearly 600 people in the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on that day now remembered as “Bloody Sunday” — a catalyst for the creation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Earlier today, the House passed a measure introduced by South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn that will rename legislation restoring provisions of the Voting Rights Act in honor of Lewis, who died on July 17 at the age of 80 of pancreatic cancer.

Marking 55 years since Lewis stood for the voting rights of Black Americans, Lewis’ body arrived in Washington after lying in repose at the Alabama Capitol. A public funeral for Lewis was already held in the congressman’s hometown of Troy, Alabama, where a horse-drawn carriage carried his body across the bridge in Selma for the last time on Sunday.

Known as the “conscience of Congress,” Lewis was one of the last surviving organizers of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, led by Martin Luther King Jr.

Though Lewis is the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda — an honor usually reserved for U.S. presidents — last year Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings became the first Black lawmaker to be lain in state at Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.

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