#House members applaud following moment of silence for Rep. John Lewis

The House stood in applause on Monday following an emotional moment of silence for Democratic Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon known as “the Conscience of Congress,” who died last Friday after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Following the one-minute pause, the clerk of the House of Representatives Susan Cole choked up as she read the resolution honoring the longtime Georgia congressman and several people bowed their heads and wept.

“Our hero, our colleague, our brother, our friend received and answered his final summons from God almighty,” said Rep. Sanford Bishop, the dean of the Georgia delegation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the chamber would hold a moment of silence for Lewis in a “Dear Colleague” letter.

“We are all deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague,” Pelosi wrote. “All of us who served with John know that he always worked on the side of the angels. Now he is with them. May he rest in peace.”

Lewis, 80, who served in the House since 1987, was the son of sharecroppers.

He was brutally beat during a civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965 that became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

He also spoke during the 1963 March on Washington in which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

With Post wires