MONDAY MUSINGS: ONE LAST CROSSING

Yesterday we as a nation watched as Rep. John Robert Lewis took his last trip across the Edmund Pettus bridge, the very same bridge in Selma, Alabama, he first walked across 55 years before on Bloody Sunday, March 7th 1965 and would continue to cross annually to commemorate. 

Yet, it wasn't Rep. Lewis's two feet that carried his body this  time but a horse drawn caisson with his casket draped in our country's flag. Pancreatic cancer had taken his life.



Mid bridge the carriage stopped. The symbolic stop was marking  Bloody Sunday where John Lewis amongst other non violent protesters saw what was awaiting them on the other side of the bridge. Civil Rights leader John Lewis would be one of the first brutally attacked, beaten by a Alabama State Trooper's night stick, knocking him unconscious and fracturing his skull. 

The mourners this Sunday could be heard singing We Shall Overcome and this Little Light of Mine.



After crossing the bridge family members were given roses to lay in front of the carriage. 





The casket was then moved  ironically by Alabama troopers into a hearse which would transport the body to lay in state in Alabama's capitol in Montgomey where afterwards the casket would be flown to D.C. to lay in state in our nation's capitol. 

Once again discussions have begun regarding renaming the bridge. Retired CBS newscaster Bob Schieffer who had walked with John Lewis last March across the bridge stated Lewis wanted the bridge to remain being called Edmund Pettus to make sure Civil Rights history was not forgotten especially the white supremacy Pettus embraced...

"History will not be kind to us. So you have a moral obligation, a mission and a mandate, to speak up, speak out and get in good trouble. You can do it. You must do it. Not just for yourselves but for generations yet unborn.” John Lewis

May the memory of  John Lewis always be a blessing...