Obama's Eulogy for John Lewis

Former President Obama delivered a moving, eloquent eulogy at the funeral of Rep. John Lewis today at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.  It's well worth your time to listen to this historic address.  Excerpt:

The life of John Lewis was, in so many ways, exceptional. It vindicated the faith in our founding, redeemed that faith; that most American of ideas; that idea that any of us ordinary people without rank or wealth or title or fame can somehow point out the imperfections of this nation, and come together, and challenge the status quo, and decide that it is in our power to remake this country that we love until it more closely aligns with our highest ideals. What a radical ideal. What a revolutionary notion. This idea that any of us, ordinary people, a young kid from Troy [Alabama] can stand up to the powers and principalities and say no this isn't right, this isn't true, this isn't just. We can do better. On the battlefield of justice, Americans like John, Americans like the Reverends Lowery and C.T. Vivian, two other patriots that we lost this year, liberated all of us that many Americans came to take for granted.

America was built by people like them. America was built by John Lewises. He as much as anyone in our history brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals. And someday, when we do finish that long journey toward 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 America.

And yet, as exceptional as John was, here's the thing: John never believed that what he did was more than any citizen of this country can do. I mentioned in the statement the day John passed, the thing about John was just how gentle and humble he was. And despite this storied, remarkable career, he treated everyone with kindness and respect because it was innate to him – this idea that any of us can do what he did if we are willing to persevere.

A life of courage, perseverance, gentleness, humility, kindness, and respect: what a concept. What a man. What an American.


Former presidents Bush and Clinton also spoke at the funeral:



Former President Carter was too frail to travel but sent a letter of condolence which was read out during the service:




The current squatter in the White House was nowhere to be seen, but he did tweet out a plug for a pizza joint during the ceremony:

Rep. John Lewis: Be Constructive, Not Destructive

Congressman John Lewis, 80, one of the last surviving leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, released this statement yesterday on his official website:

Sixty-five years have passed, and I still remember the face of young Emmett Till.  It was 1955.  I was 15 years old — just a year older than him.  What happened that summer in Money, Mississippi, and the months that followed — the recanted accusation, the sham trial, the dreaded verdict — shocked the country to its core.  And it helped spur a series of non-violent events by everyday people who demanded better from our country.

Despite real progress, I can't help but think of young Emmett today as I watch video after video after video of unarmed Black Americans being killed, and falsely accused.  My heart breaks for these men and women, their families, and the country that let them down — again.  My fellow Americans, this is a special moment in our history.  Just as people of all faiths and no faiths, and all backgrounds, creeds, and colors banded together decades ago to fight for equality and justice in a peaceful, orderly, non-violent fashion, we must do so again.

To the rioters here in Atlanta and across the country:  I see you, and I hear you.  I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness.  Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long.  Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way.  Organize.  Demonstrate.  Sit-in.  Stand-up.  Vote.  Be constructive, not destructive.  History has proven time and again that non-violent, peaceful protest is the way to achieve the justice and equality that we all deserve.

Our work won't be easy — nothing worth having ever is — but I strongly believe, as Dr. King once said, that while the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice.

N.B.--As a young man, Rep. Lewis put his life on the line many times in the cause of non-violent protest.  He endured beatings by enraged mobs and rioters as one of the original Freedom Riders in 1961, and four years later, on what came to be called "Bloody Sunday," he received a skull fracture when truncheon-wielding police charged the peaceful protesters on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama.