Speaker Pelosi Remarks at U.S. Capitol Ceremony Preceding the Lying in State of Congressman John Robert Lewis

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Speaker Pelosi. Good afternoon. It is an official, personal and very sad honor to welcome our colleague John Lewis back to the Capitol, to welcome his family and his many friends to acknowledge his sacred life.

Please stay standing for the invocation by Reverend Dr. Grainger Browning Jr., Ebenezer AME Church.

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To the family of John Lewis, welcome to the Rotunda. Under the dome of the U.S. Capitol, we have bid farewell to some of the greatest Americans in our history.

It is fitting that John Lewis joins this pantheon of patriots, resting upon the same catafalque as President Abraham Lincoln.

John revered President Lincoln. His identification with Lincoln was clear 57 years ago, at the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, where John declared: ‘Our minds, souls, and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all the people' – words that ring true today. Mr. Leader, I too was there that day. Our student years.

Between then and now, John Lewis became a titan of the Civil Rights Movement and then, the Conscience of the U.S. Congress. Here in Congress, John was revered and beloved on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the Capitol. We knew that he always worked on the side of the angels – and now, we know that he is with them. And we are comforted to know that he is with his beloved Lillian.

And may it be a comfort to John's son John Miles, the entire Lewis Family, Michael Collins, the entire staff that so many mourn their loss and are praying for them at this sad time. God truly blessed America with the life and leadership of John Lewis. We thank you for sharing him with us. May he rest in peace.

John Lewis often spoke of a ‘beloved community,' a vision that he shared with Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the community connected and uplifted by faith, hope and charity. And, indeed, John had deep faith, believing that every person has a spark of divinity making them worthy of respect. And he had faith in the charity of others, which is what gave him so much hope.

As he wrote in his book, ‘Release the need to hate, to harbor division and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won.' John the optimist.

Through it all, John was a person of greatness. He also was a person of great humility; always giving credit to others in the movement.

John committed his life to advancing justice and understood that to build a better future, we had to acknowledge the past. Exactly one year ago, it was a privilege to be with John and Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Madam Chair Karen Bass, to – on a pilgrimage to Ghana to observe 400 years since the arrival of the first slaves from Africa.

Some of the descendants of those slaves would build this Capitol, where John lies in state, on the Lincoln Catafalque.

I wish you could have all seen the response that John received when he was introduced to the Ghana Parliament. My colleagues are shaking their heads. It was overwhelming, overwhelming. And I wish you could have seen him at the Door of No Return, which enslaved people were sent through on to the death ships to cross the Atlantic. I wish you could see what it meant to him.

He knew that the Door of No Return was a central part of American history, just as was – is the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the March on Washington, the Selma March to Montgomery are.

When John made his speech 57 years ago, he was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington program. How fitting it is that in the final days of his life, he summoned the strength to acknowledge the young people peacefully protesting in the same spirit of that March taking up the unfinished work of racial justice, helping complete the journey begun more than 55 years ago.

We have all seen the photographs of John being brutally beaten in Selma which painted an iconic picture of injustice. What a beautiful contrast to see John and the Mayor of Washington, who's with us today, at the Black Lives Matter Plaza standing in solidarity with the protestors: an iconic picture of justice that will endure and will inspire our nation for years to come.

John firmly focused on the future; on how to inspire the next generation to join the fight for justice and, his quote, ‘to find a way to get in the way.' As one of the youngest leaders of the Freedom Rides, March on Washington, as I said, and March to Montgomery, he understood the power of young people to change the future.

When asked what someone can do who is nineteen or twenty years old, the age that he was when he set out to desegregate Nashville, Lewis replied, ‘A young person should be speaking out for what is fair, what is just, what is right. Speak out for those who have been left out and left behind. That is how the movement goes forward,' John said.

Imagine the great joy that he had traveling across the country to share that message of action with young people.

No need to imagine: it is my personal privilege, right now, for me to yield, to our beloved colleague, the distinguished Gentleman from Georgia, Congressman John Lewis.