John Lewis funeral service: Former presidents Obama, Clinton and Bush pay tribute to US civil rights hero

Adrian Ovalle

US civil rights hero John Lewis has actually been laid to rest, with 3 former presidents paying tribute to a male hailed as a “true American patriot”.

Mr Lewis, a veteran member of your home of Representatives, passed away previously this month at the age of 80.

He had actually revealed in December that he had actually been identified with sophisticated pancreatic cancer.

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John Lewis was referred to as a ‘true American patriot’

Mr Lewis’s funeral service was held at Atlanta’s historical Ebenezer Baptist Church, which the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr when led.

Former president Barack Obama explained him as a male of “pure joy and unbreakable perseverance”.

He likewise made a pointed recommendation to those who are “doing their darndest to discourage people from voting”.

Mr Obama was speaking hours after his follower, Donald Trump, recommended postponing November’s governmental election





Civil rights icon laid to rest

Due to the fact that of strategies for increased postal ballot amidst the coronavirus pandemic,

Mr Trump declared it would be the “most inaccurate and fraudulent in history”.

Mr Obama stated Mr Lewis “as much as anyone in our history brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals”.

“And someday when we do finish that long journey towards freedom, when we do form a more perfect union, whether it’s years from now or decades or even if it takes another two centuries, John Lewis will be a founding father of that fuller, fairer, better America,” he added.

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Barack Obama hailed Mr Lewis as a male of ‘pure pleasure and solid determination’

George W Bush, who was president from 2001 to 2009, stated Mr Lewis “always believed in preaching the Gospel in word and in deed, insisting that hate and fear had to be answered with love and hope”.

Former president Expense Clinton stated of Mr Lewis: “He never ever despaired … He kept moving.

” It is necessary that everybody who enjoyed him bear in mind that he was, after all, a human.

“A man, like all other humans, born with strengths that he made the most of when many don’t. Born with weaknesses that he worked hard to beat down when many can’t.”

“It made him in my mind even greater.”





Martin Luther King III on John Lewis

Ebenezer’s senior pastor, the Rev Raphael Warnock, informed the churchgoers as the funeral service started that Mr Lewis was a “true American patriot who risked his life for the hope and promise of democracy”.

A series of occasions to keep in mind the late congressman started on Saturday in his home town of Troy, Alabama.

They included him crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma for the final time.





Crowds salute body of civil rights icon John Lewis

The bridge ended up being a landmark in the defend racial justice when Mr Lewis and other civil rights marchers were beaten there 55 years earlier on Bloody Sunday.

This assisted galvanise assistance for the passage of the Ballot Rights Act.

Mr Lewis lay in state in Washington DC previously today, prior to his private funeral service.

Quickly prior to he passed away, Mr Lewis composed an essay for The New york city Times and asked that it be released on the day of his funeral service.

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Mr Lewis was granted the Governmental Medal of Liberty by President Obama in 2011

In the piece, he remembered the mentors of King: “He stated we are all complicit when we endure oppression.

” He stated it is inadequate to state it will improve by and by. He stated each people has an ethical responsibility to stand, speak out and speak up.”

Mr Lewis added: “Though I might not be here with you, I prompt you to respond to the highest calling of your heart and defend what you really think,

“In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.”

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