John Lewis, the civil rights icon and longtime congressman who died last week, will be honored with a service at Troy University in his hometown of Troy, Alabama, on Saturday.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called Lewis the "boy from Troy" when the two first met in 1958, according to the Associated Press, and their meeting kicked off Lewis' lifetime of activism. In 1961, Lewis was just 21 years old when he joined the Freedom Riders who rode public transportation to Alabama in an effort to integrate bus travel.
Lewis was beaten and arrested multiple times due to his activism. He was elected as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington. He served Georgia's Fifth Congressional District in Congress from 1987 until his death.
How to watch the service for John Lewis:- What: Congressman John Lewis is honored in a public service celebrating "the boy from Troy"Date: Saturday, July 25, 2020Time: 11 a.m. ETLocation: Trojan Arena, Troy University, in Troy, AlabamaOnline stream: Watch live on CBSN in the player above and on your mobile or streaming device.
On Sunday, Lewis' casket will be carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he marched with other civil rights protesters and was brutally beaten by state troopers in 1965. His body will then lie in repose at the Alabama Capitol, before his casket travels to Washington, D.C., to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. His funeral will be held Thursday at Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.
In December 2019, Lewis announced he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Lewis said in December that he has been "in some kind of fight – for freedom, equality, basic human rights – for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now."