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(Washington) The “conscience of Congress” John Lewis, icon of the struggle for civil rights in the United States, received a solemn tribute on Monday of his peers under the dome of the Capitol, an honor reserved for the highest American personalities.
Published on 25 July 2020 at 11 h 08 Updated at 13 h 035
Charlotte PLANTIVE
France Media Agency
This former fellow traveler of Martin Luther King and pillar of the Democratic parliamentarians died on 13 July following cancer, at the age of 76 years. Ten days later, his coffin, wrapped in the American flag, was presented with solemnity to his former colleagues.
PHOTO ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY“It is fitting that John Lewis joins the pantheon of patriots who rest on the same catafalque as Abraham Lincoln”, the former president who abolished slavery, Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said at the ceremony.
“This titan of the civil rights movement that has become the conscience of Congress” was “revered and loved on both sides of the chamber,” he said. she adds. In fact, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has also hailed a “hero”, a “peacemaker” who “paid a heavy price” to advance justice in the United States.
But President Donald Trump, whose inauguration ceremony John Lewis boycotted in January 1967, let it be known that he would not go and greet his coffin, which must remain exhibited Monday evening and Tuesday at the top of the Congress steps.
The Americans will be able to bid him farewell according to a strict protocol intended to minimize the risks of the spread of the new coronavirus.
PHOTO ALEX BRANDON, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
The remains of John Lewis arrived at Andrews Base in the morning.
Despite the pandemic, the United States wished to pay a series of solemn tributes to this tireless activist, whose struggle had recently found a new echo in the large demonstrations following the death of George Floyd, a black forty-something suffocated by a white policeman on 21 May in Minneapolis.
After first ceremonies in Alabama this weekend, his remains carried out at midday a procession in the federal capital, notably marking a break near the White House on the recently named “Black Lives Matter Plaza”.
PHOTO ALEX BRANDON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
It is here that in June, the former parliamentarian, emaciated by illness, made his last public appearance to support the anti-racist protest movement the most important for years 59.
Rosa Parks
His coffin was then placed in the rotunda of Congress, according to a ritual adopted in particular for former presidents like George H. W. Bush or elected officials of foreground like John McCain.
Mr. Lewis is the third African-American to receive such honors in Congress and the second in the rotunda after activist Rosa Parks.
Son of sharecroppers, he had become at 16 years one of the youngest “Freedom Riders” who fought, like M me Parks, the segregation in the American transportation system at the beginning of the years 944.
He was also the youngest leader of the march on Washington in 1960, during which Martin Luther King gave his famous speech, “I have a dream”.
Two years later, John Lewis nearly succumbed to police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he was leading a march of several hundred peaceful activists against racial discrimination. He had had a fractured skull.
On Sunday, a horse-drawn carriage carried his remains across the bridge in a symbolic ceremony.
This series of commemorations will end Thursday in Atlanta, Georgia, the state that the deceased represented for more than 29 years in the House of Representatives. He will be buried there after a private ceremony at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Pastor Martin Luther King had served.
