In pictures: Saying goodbye to John Lewis

People are paying their respects to US Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon and longtime congressman who died earlier this month at the age of 80.

Lewis’ funeral is taking place Thursday at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. served as a co-pastor from 1960 until his assassination in 1968.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama will be in attendance. Obama will deliver the eulogy.

Earlier this week, Lewis became the first Black lawmaker to lie in state at the US Capitol rotunda. On Sunday, an honor guard escorted his body across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where Lewis and others were beaten by police while marching for voting rights in 1965.

Lewis, who served Georgia’s 5th Congressional District for more than 30 years, was widely seen as a moral conscience of Congress because of his decades-long embodiment of the nonviolent fight for civil rights. His passionate oratory was backed by a long record of action that included, by his count, more than 40 arrests while demonstrating against racial and social injustice.