The casket of late U.S. congressman and civil rights figure John Lewis, carried by a military honor guard, arrives at Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., the United States, on July 27, 2020. Late U.S. congressman and civil rights figure John Lewis lay in state in the Capitol here on Monday. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

WASHINGTON, July 27  -- Late U.S. congressman and civil rights figure John Lewis lay in state in the Capitol here on Monday.

Lewis, who died earlier this month at age 80 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, has become the first African American lawmaker in the nation's history to lie in state beneath the Capitol Rotunda.

In a ceremony, lawmakers paid tributes to Lewis, who had fought for voting rights throughout his 33 years in Congress.

Vice President Mike Pence and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, are among those expected to pay their respects at the Capitol on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who's in North Carolina on Monday afternoon, told reporters that he wouldn't be stopping by the Capitol.

Born into a family of sharecroppers in 1940, Lewis was hailed for his leadership in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

A founder and early leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lewis led protests against racial injustice in an era in which apartheid was still rampant in the American South.

He was the youngest and longest surviving speaker at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom movement, which culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.