John Lewis's service was held at Troy University, where attendees were seated spaced apart and masks were required for entry because of the COVID-19 pandemic
The title for Saturday morning's service was the nickname the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave Lewis at their first meeting in 1958 in Montgomery.
Lewis, who became a civil rights icon and a longtime Georgia congressman, died July 17 at the age of 80. "I remember the day that John left home. Mother told him not to get in trouble, not to get in the way ... but we all know that John got in trouble, got in the way but it was a good trouble," his brother Samuel Lewis said. Lewis's casket was in the university’s arena where attendees were seated spaced apart and masks were required for entry because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those cotton fields were in then-segregated Pike County, where Lewis as a child winced at the signs designating "whites only" locations. Lewis was one of 10 children born into a sharecropping family. His parents saved enough money to buy their own farm where the Lewis children worked the fields and tended the animals. A young Lewis was less fond of field work — often grousing about the grueling task — but eagerly took on the job of tending the chickens while practicing preaching., Lewis described how as a youngster he longed to go the county’s public library but wasn't allowed because it was for whites only.
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