Barack Obama used his eulogy at the funeral for Rep. John Lewis on Thursday to compare President Donald Trump’s sending of federal officers to quash protests in Portland, Oregon, to the tactics of George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor who sent state troopers to violently break up peaceful civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s.
Lewis, a civil rights icon who died on July 17 at age 80, was nearly beaten to death in Selma by Alabama troopers authorized by Wallace to stop a historic march for voting rights on March 7, 1965, in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday.
Leave a Reply