This morning, I witnessed Congressman John Lewis’ flag draped casket being carried, by decorated servicemen to the Capitol Rotunda. I thought about his words forty years after his participation in the Freedom Rides of the South after white supremacists firebombed the bus he was riding on May 14, 1961, “It was very violent. I thought I was going to die. I was left lying at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery unconscious.”

On Bloody Sunday, March 9, 1965, during the Selma to Montgomery marches, his skull was cracked by the billy clubs of Alabama police as he attempted to cross a bridge named, then and now, for a confederate army officer and ku klux klan grand dragon. He thought he was going to die, then, too, but God had other plans. Yesterday, his coffin crossed that bridge one last time, accompanied by his family.