monday, july 27 , 2020. the washington post EZ RE A
BY ERIC VELASCOSElMa, ala. — Fifty-five years
ago, Alabama state troopers beat
John Lewis and hundreds of pro-
testers as they crossed the Ed-
mund Pettus Bridge. On Sunday,
troopers saluted the late civil
rights leader after he made his
final j ourney across t he span.
The body of the 17-term con-
gressman was carried on a horse-
drawn caisson from Brown Chapel
A.M.E. Church to the b ridge, where
rose p etals had b een scattered. Two
horses and a driver led the flag-
draped casket, which paused for
two minutes at 10:55 a.m. Central
time when it reached the top of the
bridge above the Alabama River.
On the o ther side, the w ords of “We
Shall Overcome” could be heard as
family, hundreds of onlookers and
several troopers g reeted L ewis.
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,” Rep. Terri A.
Sewell (D-Ala.) said.
The ceremony came on the sec-
ond of six d ays of tributes to the s on
of sharecroppers, fighter for civil
rights and lawmaker widely hailed
as the c onscience of C ongress. Lew-
is (D-Ga.) died July 17 at the age of
80 after a diagnosis of pancreatic
cancer six months earlier.
Hundreds had gathered along
the route from the church to the
bridge, some traveling hours to see
Lewis’s final journey, others lining
up in the early morning. They
spoke of p rogress on race since the
1960 s, the height of the civil rights
movement, and how far the nation
still m ust go t o achieve equality.
“I don’t t hink we would b e 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 o ur rights
— the right to live, for health care.
The right to be an equal.”
John White, 63, who owns an
appliance repair company in Ala-
chua, Fla., drove 6^1 / 2 hours to be in
Selma.
Lewis “ opened doors for what w e
have today,” White said. “He was an
inspiration to the younger genera-
tion, teaching about equality and
making this a better place for all.”
The honors began Saturday in
Lewis’s birthplace o f 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 Atlan-
ta, where the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. p reached.
In b etween, L ewis will l ie in state
in two state capitols — Montgom-
ery and Atlanta — and in the U.S.
Capitol Rotunda, where the nation
has paid tribute to past presidents,
lawmakers and other distin-
guished citizens, including civil
rights pioneer Rosa Parks in 2005.
Lewis’s crossing of the Edmund
Pettus Bridge 55 years ago was a
defining moment for a nation and
the young activist. The ceremony
on Sunday came amid a national
reckoning over systemic racism in
the wake of the police killing of
George Floyd, a black man, and
weeks of protests n ationwide.
On March 7, 1965, Lewis, then
the 25-year-old chairman of theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, led about 600 protest-
ers 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 Lyn-
don B. Johnson signed the Voting
Rights Act, which was meant to endthe obstacles preventing black peo-
ple from voting.
In subsequent years, Lewis has
led an annual march of Republi-
cans and Democrats and current
and former presidents across the
bridge. Most n otably, in 2015 on the
50th anniversary o f Bloody Sunday,
he walked across the span with the
nation’s first black president, Ba-
rack Obama; former president
George W. Bush; and many of the
foot soldiers of the 1960 s move-
ment.
“We just need to open our eyes
and our ears and our hearts to
know that this nation’s racial his-
tory still casts its long shadow upon
us,” Obama said then. “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 t he content
of our character requires a dmitting
as much.”
On Sunday, Lawrence Wofford,
71, of Selma drew parallels between
the protests of the 1960 s and the
demonstrations of today.
Joseph Lowery “would say ‘ev-
erything has changed, and yetnothing has changed,’ ” Wofford
said, invoking another late civil
rights leader. “That [Bloody Sun-
day] was a piece of the systemic
racism, and I think to some extent
that young black men being killed
by police o fficers i s another sense of
systemic r acism.”
In the days since Lewis’s death,
there have been renewed calls for
Congress to act on voting rights and
name t he legislation i n Lewis’s hon-
or. In 2013, the Supreme Court in-
validated a crucial component of
the landmark law, ruling that Con-
gress had not taken into account
the nation’s racial progress when
citing certain states for federal
oversight. The House passed legis-
lation in December t o restore t hose
protections, but the bill has lan-
guished in the GOP-led Senate.
There also have been calls to
rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge
for Lewis. Pettus was a Confederate
officer and a g rand d ragon of the K u
Klux Klan.
At the service at Troy University
on Saturday, Lewis’s flag-draped
casket was carried by men in
masks, and attendees were seated
six feet apart, a reminder that the
country is still in the midst of the
coronavirus pandemic, which has
killed nearly 150,0 00 Americans, a
disproportionate number from
low-income, minority communi-
ties.
On Sunday, vendors sold “Black
Lives Matter” T-shirts, commemo-
rative Lewis shirts and masks. Po-
lice officers from Montgomery had
black stripes across their badges in
memory of L ewis.
David Gourdine made an eight-
hour trip from Clearwater, Fla.,
with h is wife and sons, attended the
viewing Saturday night and
watched the procession on Sunday.
“I won the biological DNA lot-
tery when I was born as a white
male in this country. You try to
learn, try to see something from
someone else’s point of view,”
Gourdine said.
Angela Hunter, 49, of Selma
said today’s protests echo the
demonstrations of half a century
ago.
“It’s repeating itself. But I be-
lieve it will be better sooner or
later,” Hunter said. Asked how
change will occur, she responded:
“It will take the mighty hand of
God.”colby itkowitz in Washington
contributed to this report.John Lewis makes final crossing of Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.
BRyNN aNdERsoN/associatEd PREssElijah NouvElagE/REutERs
TOP: A man scatters rose petals on the Edmund Pettus Bridge
before a c aisson crossed with t he c asket of J ohn Lewis, a 17 -term
congressman who in 1965 led a defining civil rights march there.
ABOVE: A man later touches the hearse holding Lewis’s casket.reimagine possible.DISCOVER LUXURY OF A DIFFERENT KIND7/20 WP PBPROJECTEDOPENING2023(703) 348. (^3752) | themathertysons.com
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