U.S. civil rights icon John Lewis' body arrives at Capitol to lie in state
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a delegation Monday to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to greet Lewis's flag-draped casket. A motorcade carrying the body stopped at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House as it wound through Washington before arriving at the Capitol, where he will be the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda.
Notably absent from the ceremonies was President Donald Trump, who publicly jousted with Lewis. Lewis once called Trump an an illegitimate president and chided him for stoking racial discord. Trump countered by blasting Lewis's Atlanta congressional district as "crime-infested." "Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic," Lewis tweeted in 2018. "Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."
In Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, Lewis suffered a beating at the hands of an Alabama state trooper that became one of the defining moments of his life. He was at head of hundreds of civil rights protesters who attempted to march from the Black Belt city to the Alabama Capitol to demand access to the voting booth.
"The vote is precious. It is almost sacred," he said again and again. "It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy."
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