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Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS. |
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief. Coleman trained for 17 years as a reporter with the Call and Post Newspaper and is an investigative and political reporter with a background in legal and scientific reporting. She is also a former 15-year public school biology teacher.
WASHINGTON, D.C. –President Trump has said that he will not go and pay respects to the late Georgia congressman John Lewis as he lies in state July 27-28 at the nation's capital in Washington D.C.
No I won't be going," the Republican president said to reporters at the White House as he prepared to leave for a trip to North Carolina. "No."
Lewis was one of several House Democrats who boycotted the president's inauguration in 2017, the first time he had missed an inauguration in his many years in Congress.
Vice President Mike Pence, however, is slated to pay his respects Monday night at the capital, sources said Monday.
U.S.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday that Lewis, a staunch Black Democrat, would lie in repose at this capital Monday and Tuesday of this week as part of a series of events which began July 25 in his home town of Troy, Alabama and will end Thursday with a private funeral in Atlanta where he lived for more than 30 years until his death
The son of sharecroppers and a community activist who rose to become one of the most respected and distinguished members of Congress, Lewis died July 17 in Atlanta at 80-years-old, and following a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer.
A former Georgia state legislator out of Atlanta and 17-term Democratic Congressman who represented Georgia's 5th congressional district, Lewis was a congressman out of Atlanta since 1987.
Mourners lined the streets of Selma, Alabama Sunday afternoon to pay tribute to the late congressman, who made his final trip Sunday across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in a horse drawn carriage that held his casket, a bridge that he first crossed along side of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr more than 55-years-ago to demand passage of the Voting Rights Act.
When the young 25-year-old Lewis marched across the bridge from Selma to Montgomery with Dr. King decades ago on Sunday, March 7, 1965, he and other Civil Rights advocates were beaten, brutalized, and bloodied.
They would return to cross the bridge year after year to celebrate the anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," a turning point in the Civil Rights movement.
But on Sunday he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge for his last journey in a horse buggy that carried his casket.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
