John Lewis being remembered by loved ones and presidents at MLK’s church

Three former presidents bade farewell to Rep. John Lewis at his funeral in Atlanta Thursday — with Barack Obama eulogizing that the civil rights icon took all of America “closer to our highest ideals.”

Speaking at the Ebenezer Baptist Church from the pulpit of its famous pastor, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Obama called Lewis “the first of the Freedom Fighters.”

George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also spoke during the service.

“I’ve come here today because I, like so many Americans, owe a great debt to John Lewis, and his forceful vision of freedom,” Obama said.

“America was built by John Lewises,” Obama said.

“He, as much as anyone in our history, brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals,” he said.

“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 American,” Obama said to applause.

Lewis, Obama said, was “a mentor to young people, including me at the time. UJntil his final day on this earth, he not only embraced that responsibility, but he made it his life’s work.”

Lewis’ courage showed at a young age, Obama noted, when he and a friend, Bernard Lafayette, boarded 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 22.

“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.

[could be lede quote:]

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,” Obama said.

“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.

Lewis was instrumental in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which barred racial discrimination at the polls, Obama noted.

“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,” Obama said.

“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 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.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to hold hearings on a House-approved measure that would prohibit states with histories of racial discrimination from changing their election laws without prior federal approval.

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 is a Senate delaying tactic by which a minority of lawmakers can block a vote on legislation through extended debate or procedural delays.

President Bush was the first of the three former commanders-in-chief to deliver remarks, praising Lewis for his decades of service.

“From Troy to the sit-ins of Nashville, from the Freedom Riders to the March on Washington, from Freedom Summer to Selma, John Lewis always looked outward, not inward,” Bush said.

“He always thought of others,” Bush said.

“He always believed in preaching the gospel, in word and in deed, insisting that hate and fear had to be answered with love and hope.

“John Lewis believed in the Lord, he believed in humanity, and he believed in America,” the 43rd president said in his speech.

“He’s been called an American saint, a believer willing to give up everything — even life itself — to bear witness to the truth that drove him all his life: that we could build a world of peace and justice and harmony and dignity and love,” he continued.

Lewis, who was renowned for his decades of nonviolent protest work, grew up on a small farm. Bush quipped that it was the chickens on the farm that John first protested for.

“John’s story began on a tiny farm in Troy, Alabama, a place so small, he said you could barely find it on the map,” Bush said, “Every morning, he would rise before the sun to tend to the flock of chickens. He loved those chickens. Already called to be a minister who took care of others, John fed them and tended to their every need, even their spiritual ones. John baptized them, he married them and he preached to them.

“When his parents claimed one for family supper, John refused to eat one of his flock. Going hungry was his first act of nonviolent protest,” he said to laughter.

The Republican former president went on to discuss his political differences with Lewis, a staunch Democrat who both loudly criticized the Bush administration and successfully partnered with them on the Voting Rights Reauthorization Act in 2006.

“Listen, John and I had our disagreements, of course. But in the America John Lewis fought for and the America I believed in, differences of opinion are inevitable evidence of Democracy in action,” Bush told the church attendees.

“We the people, including congressmen and presidents, can have differing views on how to perfect our union, while sharing the conviction that our nation, however flawed, is at heart, a good and noble one,” he continued.

Clinton followed his successor, starting off his remarks by thanking Lewis’ family for allowing him to get to “say a few words about a man I loved for a long time.”

The 42nd president marveled at the homegoing thrown for Lewis, saying how he enjoyed watching the celebration of his life.

“I think its important that all of us who loved him remember that he was, after all, a human being. 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. But still a person. It made him more interesting, and it made him in my mind even greater,” he said of his longtime friend.

In talking about Lewis’ faith, Clinton described the Georgia Congressman as “a walking rebuke” to anyone who would give up on the fight for justice or equality because of how long the effort had taken.

“He kept moving,” the Democratic president said.

At the end of his remarks, Clinton kept it simple, stating that, “I just loved him, I always will, and I’m so grateful that he stayed true to form.”

Following Clinton was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who elbow bumped with the former president while taking the stage.

Pelosi, like Clinton, was also a longtime friend of Lewis’s, but

At the start of her speech, she remarked how there were 50 of her Senate and House colleagues in Ebenezer Baptist Church, noting that there would have been more if not for the coronavirus pandemic.

The reason, as she noted, was because many of the lawmakers had formed deep friendships with Lewis over his three decade career in the House of Representatives, a comment that was met with applause.

“John convinced each one of us that we were his best friend in Congress,” the nation’s highest-ranking elected Democrat told the crowd.

Pelosi, visibly choking up, then announced that the delegation had come to the funeral with a flag that was flown the evening of his passing.

“We come with a flag flown over the Capitol the night that John passed. When this flag flew there, it said goodbye. It waved goodbye to John. Our friend, our mentor, our colleague. This beautiful man that we all had the privilege of serving with in the Congress of the United States,” she said.

“Every time he stood up to speak, we knew he was going to take us to a higher place…He insisted no matter how — say, offended someone may be, that he would insist on the truth,” she added before describing the last time she saw Lewis before his passing.

The California Democrat told the crowd that she visited the 80-year-old lawmaker over July 4th weekend. During her trip, she presented Lewis with a flag pin with the words “one country, one destiny,” written on it.

Those words, she said, were sewn into Abraham Lincoln’s coat the night of his assassination.

“John Lewis and Abraham Lincoln had so much in common,” Pelosi said.

She added that the platform which Lewis’ casket was placed on top of when he lied in state in the Capitol rotunda was initially constructed for Lincoln’s casket, before growing emotional again.

At the end of her remarks, Pelosi noted that on Tuesday, the last day his casket was in the US Capitol, there was a double rainbow in the sky even though it had not rained in Washington DC.

“He was telling us, I’m home in heaven. We always knew he worked on the side of the angels, and now he is with them. May he rest in peace,” she said before exiting the stage.

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.

President Trump and former President Jimmy Carter are the only two living commanders-in-chief who will not be in attendance.

On Monday and Tuesday, Lewis was honored in Washington DC when his body lay in state.

Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle praised the late congressman for his work in the battle for equality as his body arrived at the Capitol.