Body of civil rights leader John Lewis to be carried across Selma bridge

More than 50 years after police attacked demonstrators marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in a turning point for voting rights, the body of John Lewis – a giant of the civil rights movement and a 30-year member of Congress – will cross the bridge a final time.

He died on 17 July after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. He was 80 years old.

Military service members carried his casket, draped in an American flag, into a horse-drawn carriage leading a procession from Brown Chapel AME Church on Sunday, part of a week-long series of memorials and funeral services.

Rose petals were spread across the bridge as mourners awaited his arrival.