Selma Helped Define John Lewis’s Life. In Death, He Returned One Last Time.

“This is where it all started for him,” Hydreca Lewis-Brewster, one of his nieces, said after a Saturday morning service in Troy, where a crowd of hundreds filed past his coffin to pay their respects.

During the service, his family, local officials and pastors talked about his enduring connection to a town of roughly 19,000 people about an hour southeast of Montgomery, the state capital.

Many invoked Mr. Lewis’s message of “good trouble,” a belief that change can be propelled by a willingness to rebel against an oppressive system, even in the face of steep consequences.

“Good trouble allowed John to cross bridges blockaded by legalized lynchmen who were inspired by the false notion of racial supremacy,” said the Rev. Darryl Caldwell, the pastor of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in the tiny town of Banks, just outside Troy.

“Thank you, father of all mercy, for John,” he went on, “who wore the mantle of good trouble and did not flinch in the face of fear when confronted by deputized demons who intended to discourage, deny and ultimately destroy the just course of John Robert Lewis.”

Henry Lewis, one of his brothers, who goes by Grant, remembered standing near his brother as he was sworn into Congress. Mr. Lewis looked in his direction and gave him a thumbs up. Later, Grant asked his brother what he had meant with the gesture. “This is a long way from the cotton fields of Alabama,” Mr. Lewis told him.