Body of Civil Rights Icon John Lewis Crosses Alabama Bridge for Final Time

The casket of late U.S. Congressman John Lewis, a pioneer of the civil rights movement and long-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives who died July 17, is carried outside the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Ala., July 26, 2020. Chris Aluka Berry/Reuters

SELMA, Ala.—The body of civil rights icon John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday, decades after his “Bloody Sunday” beating there drew a national spotlight to the struggle for racial equality.

A military honor guard carried his American flag-draped casket from Brown Chapel AME Church to a horse-drawn carriage, which crossed the rose-petal strewn bridge where the battering of Lewis by a white state trooper during a voting rights demonstration in 1965 became a focal point of the movement. The carriage driver wore a black top hat and a white face mask to guard against spread of the coronavirus.