Barack Obama delivers eulogy at Rep. John Lewis’ funeral
Former President Barack Obama delivered an emotional eulogy at civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis’ funeral Thursday afternoon, calling him a “mentor” to many and praising him for his “courage.”
The 44th president, who followed speeches from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said that he was delivering the remarks because of a “great debt” to Lewis.
“I’ve come here today because I like so many Americans owe a great debt to John Lewis, and his forceful vision of freedom,” the former commander-in-chief said at the beginning of his eulogy.
“Now this country is a constant work in progress. We’re born with instructions to form a more perfect union, and explicit in those words is the idea that we’re imperfect,” he continued, “What gives each new generation purpose is to take up the unfinished work of the last and carry it further than any might have thought possible.”
Lewis, Obama said, was “a mentor to young people, including me at the time — until his final day on this earth, he not only embraced that responsibility, but he made it his life’s work.”
The 44th president then noted the bravery of Lewis to begin fighting for racial justice in his teens, specifically referencing a 19-year-old Lewis and Bernard Lafayette boarding a segregated bus after the Supreme Court declared such facilities unconstitutional.
“Imagine the courage of two people Malia’s age, younger than my oldest daughter, on their own to challenge an entire infrastructure of oppression. John was only 20-years-old,” he said. The ex-president’s eldest daughter is currently 22-years-old.
“But he pushed all 20 of those years to the center of the table, betting everything, all of it, that his example could challenge centuries of convention and generations of brutal violence,” Obama continued.
Remarking on the long path of progress and the country’s evolution throughout history, the former president called Lewis a Founding Father of the America that will one day offer equality to all.
“America was built by John Lewises. He, as much as anyone one 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,” Obama said to applause from the crowd.
Obama said that Lewis pledged “as long as he had a breath in his body, he would do everything he could to preserve this democracy, and as long as we have breath in our bodies, we have to continue his cause.”
“If we want our children to grow up in a democracy — not just with elections but a true democracy, a representative democracy…then, we’re going to have to be more like John.”
The former president continued that Americans did not have to do everything that the civil rights legend had done in his life, as Lewis had already done those things “for us.”
“But, we’ve got to do something,” he said to cheers from the audience again.
Instead, he argued, Americans had to translate their passion for progress and societal change into laws by voting and protecting voting rights.
“The Voting Rights Act is one of the crowning achievements of our democracy. It’s why John crossed that bridge, it’s why he spilled his blood. And by the way, it was the result of Democratic and Republican efforts. President Bush…and his father signed its renewal when they were in office,” Obama said.
Obama then praised President Clinton for passing legislation making it easier for Americans to vote, as the Voting Rights Act had already been signed by his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush.
“If politicians want to honor John…there’s a better way than a statement calling him a hero. You want to honor John? Let’s honor him by revitalizing the Voting Rights Act that he was willing to die for,” he said.
The comment led to a standing ovation across the church.
Obama remarked that he viewed renaming the act in Lewis’ name would be “a fine tribute,” but not far enough.
He then called for the legislation to be expanded, specifically restoring voting rights to felons, making Election Day a federal holiday, increasing the number of polling precincts and giving Congressional seats to Washington DC and Puerto Rico.
“If all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do,” he said.
The filibuster refers to a Senate procedural rule that requires the lawmakers to get 60 votes allow most pieces of legislation to pass.
The Georgia Congressman died earlier this month from stage 4 pancreatic cancer at the age of 80. He had been diagnosed in December of last year.
First elected in 1986 and lauded as “the conscience of Congress,” Lewis, a staunch Democrat, commanded respect from both sides of the aisle.
He forged his reputation in the 1960s, most notably during the 1965 civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, during which he suffered a skull fracture at the end of a police billy club.
“There is still work yet to be done,” he urged during a 50th-anniversary event at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 2015. The bridge is where the march, now referred to as “Bloody Sunday,” took place.