To many of those watching the horse-drawn hearse take the body of U.S. Rep. John Lewis across the Edmund Pettus Bridge one final time last week, the most remarkable moment came when Alabama state troopers snapped to salute as his casket passed.

What a contrast to 55 years ago. Lewis then led 600 voting rights advocates across that bridge in a march to finally secure the right to vote. They were attacked by Alabama state troopers wearing gas masks. Some were on horseback, savagely beating the peaceful marchers with clubs.

Lewis was among the first to fall, his skull cracked. He and others were seriously injured and hospitalized. Civil rights marchers had long endured official oppression and threats and beatings. This had long been open public policy in the post-Reconstruction South.

For the first time, the brutality was filmed and aired during the evening news in living rooms across America and around the world. People were shocked. Five months later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, restoring the right to vote for Lewis and the others who crossed that bridge.

A key provision of the Voting Rights Act recognized that some states, mostly in the South, would likely do anything to avoid Black citizens registering and voting. To head off new discrimination, the law required them to get the approval — pre-clearance — of the U.S. Justice Department before changing their voting laws.

It worked well until the Supreme Court invalidated that provision in 2013. In Shelby County v. Holder, the court said that federal oversight was no longer necessary because of the social and legislative progress in those states since 1965. It was naïve at best and clearly wrong. Immediately after the court’s decision, those states began enacting laws and regulations to make it harder for minorities and the poor to register and to vote.

Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would put the teeth back into the Voting Rights Act. Lewis marked the passage by banging the gavel at the podium to the applause of those who had supported it, mostly along party lines. But, since then, the bill has been stalled in the Senate, where the original law had passed unanimously.

That’s why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s eulogy for Lewis in the Capitol Rotunda has some folks demanding action. McConnell said that Lewis helped “our nation move past the sin of racism and align more with the principles of our founding.” Now, McConnell can help do that, too, by bringing the Voting Rights Act legislation to a vote and making sure that it passes.

John Lewis was arrested 40 times and beaten and bloodied more times than that. He was attacked by mobs and left for dead on the streets. He was in and out of jails. Each time, he was released renewed.

Consider the image of St. Sebastian, an early martyr who fought religious persecution and was shot with arrows upon the orders of the Roman emperor. Sebastian survived those attacks, his faith even stronger. He is often portrayed standing tall, riddled with arrows, refusing to bend.

That was John Lewis.

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