Crossing over

Congressman’s casket passes over site of his 1965 Bloody Sunday beating

The casket of Rep. John Lewis moves over the Edmund Pettus Bridge by horse-drawn carriage Sunday during a memorial service for Lewis in Selma, Ala. Lewis was severely injured on the bridge in 1965 when state troopers attacked civil-rights protesters on what has become known as “Bloody Sunday.” Lewis, who died July 17, later lay in state in Montgomery.

SELMA, Ala. — Fifty-five years ago, Alabama troopers beat John Lewis and hundreds of protesters as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. On Sunday, troopers saluted the late civil rights leader after he made his final journey across the span.

The body of the 17-term congressman was carried on a horse-drawn caisson from Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church to the bridge, where rose petals had been scattered. Two horses and a driver led the flag-draped casket, which paused for two minutes at 10:55 a.m. when it reached the top of the bridge above the Alabama River. On the other side, the words of “We Shall Overcome” could be heard as family members, hundreds of onlookers and several troopers greeted Lewis.

A military honor guard moved the casket from the caisson to a hearse for the trip to Montgomery, where he will lie in state. Alabama state police were accompanying Lewis to the capital.

“It is poetic justice that this time Alabama state troopers will see John to his safety,” said Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala.

The ceremony was the second of six days of tributes to the son of sharecroppers, fighter for civil rights and lawmaker widely hailed as the conscience of Congress. Lewis, D-Ga., died July 17 at the age of 80 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Hundreds had gathered along the route from the church to the bridge, some traveling hours to see Lewis’ final journey, others lining up in the early morning. They spoke of both progress on race since the 1960s, the height of the civil rights movement, and how far the nation still must go to achieve equality.

“I don’t think we would be where we are if not for him and what happened on the Pettus Bridge,” said Patrice Houston, a 57-year-old retiree from Atlanta, who was in place at 7:30 a.m. and recalled meeting Lewis.

“We have evolved as a country. But we’re still fighting for our rights — the right to live, for health care. The right to be an equal.”

John White 63, who owns an appliance repair company in Alachua, Fla., drove for 6½ hours to be in Selma.

Lewis “opened doors for what we have today,” White said. “He was an inspiration to the younger generation, teaching about equality and making this a better place for all.”

The honors began Saturday in Lewis’s birthplace of Troy, Ala., with prayers, family recollections, songs and a plea to carry on his legacy of fighting for a more just society. It will end Thursday with a service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.

In between, Lewis will lie in state in two state capitols — Montgomery and Atlanta — and in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where the nation has paid tribute to presidents, lawmakers and other distinguished citizens, including civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks in 2005.

Lewis’ crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge 55 years ago was a defining moment for a nation and the young activist. Sunday’s ceremony came amid a national reckoning over systemic racism in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a Black man, in police custody and weeks of protests nationwide.

On March 7, 1965, Lewis, at the time a 25-year-old chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, led about 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.

“I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick,” Lewis said decades later. “I really believe to this day that I saw death.”

Within months, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which was meant to end the obstacles preventing Black people from voting.

In subsequent years, Lewis has led an annual march of Republicans and Democrats, current and former presidents, across the bridge. Most notably, in 2015 on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, he walked across the span with the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama; former President George W. Bush; and many of the foot soldiers of the 1960s movement.

“We just need to open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us,” Obama said. “We know the march is not yet over; we know the race is not yet won. We know reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character requires admitting as much.”

(AP/John Bazemore)