John Lewis’ last Pettus crossing provides ‘poetic justice’
A whole lot joined her, lining Broad Road to say goodbyes to a civil rights icon who recommended presidents, spent 17 phrases in Congress and was identified the world over as a logo of affection, nonviolence and racial therapeutic.
A horse-drawn caisson drew Lewis’ flag-draped casket from the close by Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, the place the Selma march had begun. Not like Lewis’ annual anniversary pilgrimages to the bridge, wherein he led 1000’s of admirers behind him, the caisson crossed the bridge alone.
Purple rose petals had been scattered on its black asphalt path, a logo of the blood shed 55 years earlier. Crowds that shouted “thanks” and “good hassle” because the carriage handed fell silent because it reached the bridge’s apex and stopped beneath the awning bearing Pettus’ title. The driving force, Darrell Watkins, stood up, eliminated his high hat and held it to his coronary heart.
Lewis’ surviving siblings and son, John-Miles Lewis, met the caisson there and adopted it for the rest of its journey.
On the opposite aspect of the Alabama River, Lewis’ prolonged household met it singing “We Shall Overcome.” A line of Alabama state troopers saluted the person whom their predecessors bloodied on the identical floor 55 years earlier.
July 26, 2020 Selma, Alabama – A horse-drawn caisson carrying the physique ofÊCongressman John Lewis crosses Edmund Pettus Bridge for The Remaining Crossing on Sunday, July 26, 2020. (Hyosub Shin / Hyosub.Shin@ajc.com)
Credit score: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit score: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
“It’s poetic justice that this time Alabama state troopers will see John to his security,” mentioned Congresswoman Terri Sewell, D-Ala., who spoke throughout a short program forward of the crossing.
The scene was a bookend to a profession that spanned greater than six a long time, a second designed to remind America of how far it’s come since “Bloody Sunday” pricked the nation’s consciousness, as Lewis typically favored to say.
The assaults that Lewis, Moton and a whole bunch different civil rights protesters sustained that day opened white America’s eyes to the struggles of Black folks, which it had lengthy ignored. Every week later, President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced he would help laws guaranteeing African People full voting rights. Months later, he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into legislation.
The burden of Sunday’s occasions was misplaced to nobody who converged on this small central Alabama river city, many sporting facemasks and t-shirts bearing Lewis’ face or signature catchphrases.
Jeraldyne Dorsey, 72, a Halfway, Alabama, resident who watched the occasion with a good friend and her daughter mentioned, “He tried what we couldn’t strive, he did what we couldn’t do.”
After the crossing, Lewis’ hearse traveled alongside the route marchers ultimately took to Montgomery, the place his physique would lie in state by way of the night within the Alabama Capitol.
In Selma, Moton had been dissatisfied to study the general public wouldn’t be allowed to cross the bridge with Lewis. However she was blown away when the caisson bearing his casket stopped in entrance of her for a number of minutes forward of the ceremony.
Then she adopted it to the place she needed to cease, and Moton quietly watched it make its approach throughout the marginally rising bridge, the place it appeared to fade into pale blue skies and vibrant solar, and out of view. She captured the second on her iPhone.
A floral association on the foot of the bridge — white lilies, roses and gladiolus, which historically symbolize power, sincerity and integrity — was separated, with flowers given to these current. Moton was given white gladiolus.
Credit score: Ryon Horne / Ryon.Horne@ajc.com
The Edmund Pettus Bridge is strewn with rose petals in preparation for John Lewis’ last crossing, a far cry from his brutal reception Bloody Sundayin 1965.
Credit score: Ryon Horne / Ryon.Horne@ajc.com
As she crossed the bridge on the finish of the ceremony, she pulled petals from her flowers and allow them to fall onto the crimson rose petals. The struggle, she mentioned, continues.
“When George Floyd’s life was snuffed out and other people noticed it, it rekindled the human spirit of human life,” mentioned Moton, a very long time psychotherapist who has been energetic in voter registration efforts. “I feel folks see what we’re doing is combating not for civil rights however human rights.”
Patrice Houston, 57, made the journey from Atlanta to see Lewis’ last crossing.
“That is the place it began,” she mentioned. “This isn’t the place it ends, however that is the final time he’ll cross this bridge and it was so necessary for me to be right here to witness this.”
Workers writers Tia Mitchell and Ernie Suggs contributed to this text.
Monday and Tuesday’s occasions
The Lewis tributes now head to Washington, D.C. The theme for the subsequent two days is “The Conscience of the Congress.”
Monday’s remembrance kicks off at 2 p.m. with a particular ceremony within the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
For the reason that Capitol is closed to the general public as a result of COVID-19, Lewis will lie in state on the East Entrance steps of the U.S. Capitol between three p.m. and 9 p.m. on Monday and eight a.m. and 10 p.m. on Tuesday. Lewis is the second-ever African American to lie in state on Capitol Hill.
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July 28, 2020 at 05:50AM
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