Atlanta, Jul 22 (AP) On the eve of his funeral, a horse-drawn carriage will take The Rev. CT Vivian's casket 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, Vivian's body will lie in state in the rotunda of the Georgia Capitol. Vivian died Friday at age 95.

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More than a decade before lunch-counter protests made headlines during the Civil Rights movement, Vivian began organizing sit-ins against segregation in Peoria, Illinois, in the 1940s.

He later joined forces with King and organized the Freedom Rides across the South to halt segregation.

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Vivian was honoured 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. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)