President Donald Trump will NOT….
Three former presidents and the most powerful woman in Congress will say their goodbyes to civil rights icon John Lewis at his funeral service at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Thursday.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will each deliver tributes to the late congressman. Former President Barack Obama will deliver the official eulogy.
Lewis’ funeral is the penultimate event of the six-day celebration of his life, which took the Alabama native and Georgia congressman through Alabama, Georgia and Washington, D.C. Lewis, an American hero who was brutally beaten during the “Bloody Sunday” protest in Selma, Ala. in 1965, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the last time over the weekend, lay in repose in Selma and Troy, Ala., and lay in state at the Alabama state Capitol, U.S. Capitol and Georgia state Capitol.
Lewis, 80, died July 17. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last December. Lewis represented the Atlanta area in Congress from 1987 until his death.
The service, which was closed to the public, brought some of the most powerful politicians in the country to deliver remarks. Other speakers include the Rev. Bernice King, CEO of the King Center, who will lead a prayer, activist James Lawson, former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, Lewis’ deputy chief of staff Jamila Thompson and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democratic Senate candidate and senior pastor of the church.
President Donald Trump, who had no events on his schedule for Thursday morning, stayed in Washington to tour the American Red Cross national headquarters and participate in a roundtable on donating plasma in the afternoon….
image…Members of the joint services military honor guard carry the casket of Rep. John Lewis into the Ebenezer Baptist Church on July 30 in Atlanta, Georgia. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images
I have been watching all day as I try to work. Very moving (at least in most parts).
Now, a military Honor Guard removes the Congressman’s casket and places it in the hearse as the congregation watch a video of John Lewis dancing to “Happy” by Pharrell Williams.
Only in America. The networks should have done a split screen on that.
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Former President Barack Obama gave an extraordinary eulogy at the funeral for Rep. John Lewis.
That he’s a great speaker is no surprise. But I did not expect Obama to give such a pointed and consequential speech so perfectly-timed for this moment in our country’s history.
Obama drew a straight line from “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, when Lewis and other civil rights marchers were brutally beaten by police in Selma, to the Black Lives Matter protests around the country today.
Without mentioning names, he made a direct comparison of George Wallace, the racist Alabama governor who ordered the police to be violent that day, to President Trump and the clearing of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square, Portland and other cities.
Obama even explicitly called for eliminating the filibuster — “a Jim Crow relic” — if it’s used to block a new voting rights act in the next Congress.
Said Obama: “We may not have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot, but even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting — by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws. And attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the postal service in the run-up to an election that’s going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick.”
The speech was a clear signal of how sharply Obama — and likely Biden too — may define the stakes of the upcoming election.
Obama mostly kept quiet over the last three years out of respect for tradition. But that period seems to be ending now.