WASHINGTON – The body of Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon, is arriving in Washington, D.C. Monday morning for a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.
Congressman John Lewis died at the age of 80 on July 17 after a six-month battle with stage four pancreatic cancer.
Recommended Videos
You can watch the Washington, D.C. ceremony live in the video player below.
Lewis’ hearse is stopping at eight locations across Washington, D.C. before arriving at the U.S. Capitol for a ceremony and lying in state.
MORE: Civil rights icon John Lewis remembered in his hometown
Lewis was the youngest and last survivor of the ‘Big Six’ civil rights activists who organized the 1963 March on Washington, and spoke shortly before the group’s leader, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to a vast sea of people.
Some said one of his greatest accomplishments was leading 600 protestors in the “Bloody Sunday March: across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Lewis’ body was transported across the bridge for a final time on Sunday loaded atop a horse-drawn wagon.
READ: Remembering John Lewis, rights icon and ‘American hero’
Lewis started serving in Congress in 1986 and earned bipartisan respect in Washington, where some called him the “conscience of Congress.” His humble manner contrasted with the puffed chests on Capitol Hill. But as a liberal on the losing side of many issues, he lacked the influence he’d summoned at the segregated lunch counters of his youth, or later, within the Democratic Party, as a steadfast voice for the poor and disenfranchised.
He was a guiding voice for a young Illinois senator who became the first Black president.
“I told him that I stood on his shoulders,” Obama wrote in a statement marking Lewis’s death. “When I was elected President of the United States, I hugged him on the inauguration stand before I was sworn in and told him I was only there because of the sacrifices he made.”
In December 2019, Lewis announced he was diagnosed with Advanced Pancreatic Cancer, calling it ‘The Fight of his Life.’
MORE: Remembering John Lewis: Michigan leaders pay tribute to civil rights icon