John Lewis funeral: 3 former presidents eulogize civil rights icon

ATLANTA — John Lewis was mourned, revered and celebrated as an American hero on Thursday at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, a sacred place for many of those who helped to shape civil rights history.

Three former presidents joined in the eulogies after nearly a week of mourning that took him from his birthplace in Alabama to the nation’s capital of Washington to his final resting place in his home of Atlanta.

“I’ve come here today because I like so many Americans owe a great debt to John Lewis and his forceful vision of freedom,” former President Barack Obama said.

Lewis was “a man of pure joy and unbreakable perseverance,” Obama said.

2:30 U.S. civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis laid to rest

“He always believed in preaching the Gospel in word and in deed, insisting that hate and fear had to be answered with love and hope,” former President George W. Bush said from the pulpit. Lewis died July 17 at the age of 80.

Former President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi also spoke.

2:34 John Lewis funeral: George W. Bush says Lewis ‘always thought of others’

Pelosi recalled how Lewis’ body was lying in state at the U.S. Capitol earlier this week, and a double rainbow appeared.

“There was this double rainbow over the casket,” she said. “He was telling us, ‘I’m home in heaven, I’m home in heaven.’ We always knew he worked on the side of angels, and now he is with them.”

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The arc of Lewis’ legacy of activism was once again tied to Ebenezer’s former pastor Martin Luther King Jr., whose sermons Lewis discovered while scanning the radio dial as a 15-year-old boy growing up in then-segregated Alabama.

King continued to inspire Lewis’ civil rights work for the next 65 years as he fought segregation during sometimes bloody marches, Greyhound bus “Freedom Rides” across the South and later during his long tenure in the U.S. Congress.

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America,” Lewis said of his run-ins with the law. The phrase was repeated several times during the funeral.

2:34 Joe Biden pays respects to late civil rights giant John Lewis

“We will continue to get into good trouble as long as you grant us the breath to do so,” one of King’s daughters, the Rev. Bernice King, said as she led the congregation in prayer.

“Here lies a true American patriot who risked his life for the hope and promise of democracy,” Ebenezer’s senior pastor, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, told the congregation.

Outside Ebenezer, hundreds gathered to watch the service on a large screen outside the church. Some sang the gospel song “We Shall Overcome.”

When Lewis was 15, he heard King’s sermons on WRMA, a radio station in Montgomery, Alabama, he recalled in an interview for the Southern Oral History Program.

4:39 John Lewis funeral: Nancy Pelosi pays tribute to late civil rights icon

“Later I saw him on many occasions in Nashville while I was in school between 1958 and ’61,” Lewis said. “In a sense, he was my leader.”

King was “the person who, more than any other, continued to influence my life, who made me who I was,” Lewis wrote in his 1998 autobiography, “Walking with the Wind.”

By the summer of 1963, Lewis was addressing thousands of people during the March on Washington, where King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. He spoke then about Black people beaten by police and jailed — themes that resonate vividly in today’s times.