TROY, Ala. (AP) — Civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman John Lewis is being remembered in ceremonies in the rural Alabama county where his story began.
Friends, family and admirers began a series of celebrations of Lewis' life at Troy University in rural Pike County. That's where Lewis would later playfully remind the university chancellor that he was denied admission in 1957 because he was Black. Years later he would receive an honorary doctorate there.
On Sunday, Lewis' flag-draped casket was carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where he was badly beaten by state troopers in 1965. His body later will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol in Washington before funeral services next week in Georgia.