Watch live: Funeral service for the late John Lewis in Georgia
The funeral follows a week of honoring the longtime lawmaker and civil rights icon following his death on July 17.
The funeral for the late John Lewis will be held in Georgia on Thursday, July 30. The funeral follows a week of honoring the longtime lawmaker and civil rights icon following his death on July 17.
During a ceremony Wednesday at the Georgia Capitol, Lewis was lauded as a warrior and a hero. Lewis will lie in repose Wednesday before a funeral service that at least two former presidents are expected to attend.
The funeral for the late John Lewis will take place on Thursday, July 30. Watch it in the live player above.
People lined the streets as the hearse carrying Lewis’ body moved through downtown. It stopped briefly in front of a mural of Lewis with the word “Hero” before arriving at the state Capitol. Members of the public later filed into the state Capitol rotunda to pay their respects to Lewis, pausing to take photographs in front of his flag-draped coffin.
The funeral service in Atlanta is scheduled for Thursday, followed by a private burial.
Former President Barack Obama will be attending Lewis’ service and is expected to address mourners, according to a person familiar with the funeral arrangements who was not authorized to speak publicly. President George W. Bush’s office said the former president and first lady Laura Bush also will attend.
Wednesday’s service is part of a series of public remembrances for Lewis that began over the weekend.
A memorial service at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Monday drew congressional leaders from both parties. Lewis was the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday, his flag-draped casket was carried down the Capitol steps and placed in a hearse as people watched solemnly, many with their hands on their hearts.
On Sunday, his casket was carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where the one-time “Freedom Rider” was among civil rights demonstrators beaten by state troopers in 1965.
Lewis, who spent more than three decades in Congress, died July 17 at the age of 80. Born to Alabama sharecroppers during Jim Crow segregation, he spoke ahead of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’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.
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