Through tears, Congress lauds Lewis
Silence, then applause for late civil rights icon
WASHINGTON — The House on Monday stood for an emotional moment of silence for Georgia Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died last week from pancreatic cancer.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi gaveled the House to order, calling on “all who loved John Lewis, wherever you are, rise in a moment of silence in remembrance of the conscience of the Congress.”
Several people on the dais wept as the House stood in silence, heads bowed. When Pelosi tried to move on, those gathered interrupted with sustained applause.
“Our hero, our colleague, our brother, our friend received and answered his final summons from God almighty,” said Rep. Sanford Bishop, the dean of the Georgia delegation.
Lewis, 80, died Friday, several months after he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. The son of sharecroppers, Lewis survived a congressman who died Friday at age 80 of pancreatic cancer.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell called Lewis a “great man” who helped bend the nation’s history toward justice, but Republicans appear unlikely to bring up the voting rights bill for a Senate vote. The impasse highlights how the bipartisan consensus around civil rights-era voting protections — and particularly the use of federal power to enforce them — has evaporated since a 2013 Supreme Court decision struck down portions of the 1965 law. brutal police beating during a 1965 civil rights march in Selma, Alabama.
Earlier, Pelosi choked up recalling their last conversation.
“It was a sad one,” Pelosi said of their conversation Thursday. “We never talked about his dying until that day.”