Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
A song for a hero
Fraternity members sing Saturday at the casket of Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., in Troy, Ala., during the first of six days of tributes to the civil-rights icon who died July 17.
Family members, religious leaders and local officials remembered John Lewis on Saturday, the first of six days of tributes honoring the life of the late civil rights leader and congressman.
Speakers at a public memorial service in Troy, Ala. — Lewis’ birthplace — urged Americans to carry on his legacy. His brother, Freddie Lewis, implored people to do so by voting. His sister, Rosa Mae Tyner, recalled that he “lived with the never-ending desire to help others.” Another brother, Henry “Grant” Lewis, said Lewis “would gravitate toward the least of us.”
His young great-nephew, Jackson Lewis Brewster, called Lewis his “hero.”
“It’s up to us to keep his legacy alive,” the child said.
Lewis, D-Ga., died July 17 at the age of 80 after a sixmonth battle with pancreatic cancer.
Lewis’s flag-draped casket was carried by men in face masks and attendees were seated 6 feet apart, a reminder that the country is still in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has cost the lives of nearly 150,000 Americans, disproportionately from low-income, minority communities.
The memorial Saturday honored the son of a sharecropper, civil rights leader and 17-term congressman. In honors afforded to a select few, Lewis will lie in state in two state capitals — Montgomery, Ala., and Atlanta — and the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, where the nation has paid tribute to past presidents, lawmakers and other distinguished citizens, including civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks in 2005.
Today, Lewis’ casket will be part of a procession across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Lewis will be accompanied by a military honor guard on his final crossing of the bridge.
On March 7, 1965, Lewis, then the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, led some 600 protesters in a march across the bridge for civil rights. State troopers beat the demonstrators and Lewis suffered a cracked skull on what became known as Bloody Sunday.
Within months, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which was meant to end the obstacles preventing Blacks from voting.
A funeral for Lewis will be held Thursday at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.
Lewis’ family called the inaugural memorial event on Saturday “The Boy from Troy,” the nickname King gave Lewis when they first met. He will lie in repose at Troy University, where he sought admission when it was an all-white college and was denied. Years later, the university awarded him an honorary doctoral degree.
“He became a figure known around the world for action, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, confronting Alabama State Troopers,” said Troy Mayor Jason Reeves. “And now Alabama State Troopers will lead his body around this state as we celebrate his life.”
Henry Grant Lewis recalled his last conversation with his brother the night before he died. The late congressman was asking how the family was doing and wanting his brother to tell them he’d asked about them.
Henry Grant Lewis also shared an exchange he’d had with his brother when he was first sworn into Congress. The new congressman looked up at his family watching from the gallery above the House floor and flashed his brother a thumbs up.
After, Henry Grant Lewis asked his brother what he was thinking when he made that gesture.
“I was thinking,” he recalled his brother saying, “this is a long way from the cotton fields of Alabama.”