Las Vegas Review-Journal

Lawmakers pay tribute to John Lewis

‘Conscience of Congress’ receives bipartisan praise

- By Bill Barrow and Andrew Taylor The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In a solemn display of bipartisan unity, congressio­nal leaders praised Democratic Rep. John Lewis as a moral force for the nation on Monday in a Capitol Rotunda memorial service rich with symbolism and punctuated by the booming, recorded voice of the late civil rights icon.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Lewis the “conscience of the Congress” who was “revered and beloved on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the Capitol.” Senate Majority

Leader Mitch Mcconnell praised the longtime Georgia congressma­n as a model of courage and a “peacemaker.”

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” McConnell, a Republican, said, quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “But that is never automatic. History only bent toward what’s right because people like John paid the price.”

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 King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington and was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the nation’s first Black president in 2011.

Dozens of lawmakers looked on

Monday as Lewis’ flag-draped casket sat atop the catafalque built for President Abraham Lincoln. Lewis was the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda.

“You must find a way to get in the way. You must find a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble,” Lewis intoned in a recorded commenceme­nt address he’d delivered in his hometown of Atlanta. “Use what you have … to help make our country and make our world a better place, where no one will be left out or left behind. … It is your time.”

Pelosi, who counted Lewis as a close friend, met his casket earlier Monday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, and Lewis’ motorcade stopped at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House.

 ?? Shawn Thew The Associated Press ?? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., second from left with her back to the camera, attends a memorial service Monday as the casket of Rep. John Lewis, D-GA., lies in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington. Lewis died July 17 at the age of 80.
Shawn Thew The Associated Press House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., second from left with her back to the camera, attends a memorial service Monday as the casket of Rep. John Lewis, D-GA., lies in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington. Lewis died July 17 at the age of 80.

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