The body of the late John Lewis arrived in the Rotunda of the US Capitol, where he will lie in state as lawmakers pay tribute to the longtime Georgia lawmaker and leader of the civil rights movement.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, led a delegation to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to greet Lewis’s flag-draped casket. The motorcade stopped at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House as it wound through Washington before arriving at the Capitol, where the late congressman becomes the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda.
As with others afforded the honor, Lewis’s casket rested on the catafalque built for Abraham Lincoln’s funeral in 1865.
Pelosi and others will attend a private ceremony in the Rotunda before Lewis’s body is moved to the steps on the Capitol’s east side for a public viewing, an unusual sequence required because the Covid-19 pandemic has closed the Capitol to the public. Inside the Rotunda and outdoors, signs welcomed visitors with a reminder that masks would be required.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
