Rep. John Lewis's body carried across Alabama's Edmund Pettus Bridge

The body of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis on Sunday was taken across Selma, Alabama's Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Lewis 55 years ago lead a group of people across the bridge as they marched for civil rights.

Police beat demonstrators on March 7, 1965, a day known as "Bloody Sunday," and in the process cracked the 25-year-old Lewis's skull.

“It is poetic justice that this time Alabama state troopers will see John to his safety,” Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-Ala.) noted, according to the Washington Post.

The long-serving Georgia congressman, who spent more than three decades as a member of the nation's legislature, for many years lead annual bipartisan marches across the bridge, including in 2015 when he was joined by America's first black Commander in Chief, President Barack Obama, and former President George W. Bush. 

There are calls to rename the bridge after Lewis. Edmund Pettus, the man whose name the bridge currently bears, served as a Confederate soldier and a member of the Ku Klux Klan.