C.T. Vivian remembered at Georgia Capitol ahead of funeral
Published 3:43 pm Wednesday, July 22, 2020
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ATLANTA (AP) — On the eve of his funeral, a horse-drawn carriage will take the Rev. C.T. Vivian’s casket from the Georgia Capitol to Martin Luther King Jr.’s tomb in Atlanta on Wednesday.
Before the carriage rolls down Piedmont Avenue and Auburn Avenue to The King Center, a viewing and ceremony was held in the rotunda of the Georgia Capitol.
Vivian died Friday at age 95.
More than a decade before lunch-counter protests made headlines during the Civil Rights movement, Vivian began organizing sit-ins against segregation in Peoria, Ill., in the 1940s.
He later joined forces with King and organized the Freedom Rides across the South to halt segregation.
Vivian was honored by former President Barack Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
Vivian “was always one of the first in the action — a Freedom Rider, a marcher in Selma, beaten, jailed, almost killed, absorbing blows in hopes that fewer of us would have to,” Obama said in a statement shortly after his death.
A private funeral is set for Thursday at Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta.
