Obama calls the filibuster a 'Jim Crow relic' and says it should be abolished if necessary during his powerful eulogy for John Lewis

• In a eulogy for Rep. John Lewis on Thursday, former President Barack Obama called for eliminating the legislative filibuster if that's what it takes to pass federal voting laws.
• Obama called on Congress to pass a series of voting-rights reforms, including restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act that Lewis worked hard to secure.
• "If all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that's what we should do," Obama said.
• Under the Senate's rules, 60 votes are required to invoke cloture, or close floor debate, on a given topic. Under that threshold, senators can talk as long as they want and filibuster legislation.

At Rep. John Lewis' memorial service on Thursday, former President Barack Obama called to eliminate the legislative filibuster if that's what it takes to pass federal voting laws.

Obama praised Lewis' record of securing key voting-rights victories, including the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Obama also called for a slew of reforms, including restoring the parts of that law that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013, expanding polling places, instituting automatic voter registration, and reenfranchising formerly incarcerated Americans.

"If all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that's what we should do," Obama said in his eulogy.

Eliminating the filibuster would drastically change the way legislative proceedings work in the Senate. Under its rules now, 60 votes are required to invoke cloture, or close floor debate, on a given topic.

Without the 60 votes to invoke cloture, any senator can filibuster, or talk as long as they want on the floor, to extend debate as long as possible in an effort to kill the legislation. Segregationist senators frequently used the filibuster to block civil-rights legislation in the 20th century.

Lewis, who represented Georgia's 5th District, was one of the last living icons of the civil-rights movement and a hero of voting rights. He died on July 17. He was 80.

The journalist and author Ari Berman wrote in The Nation in 2013 that the Voting Rights Act was Lewis' "signature achievement."

"Of all the surviving leaders of the movement, Lewis is most responsible for its passage and its overwhelming reauthorization four times by Congress," Berman wrote. "He is the soul of the voting rights movement and its most eloquent advocate."

Lewis led a march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. The marchers were met with brutal violence from Alabama state troopers, and the event became known as "Bloody Sunday."

Lewis told NPR's "Fresh Air" in 2016 that the event gave the civil-rights movement the momentum to push President Lyndon Johnson to pass the watershed Voting Rights Act.

"Two weeks after Bloody Sunday, we started on the third effort to make it from Selma to Montgomery. Three hundred of us marched all of the way," he recalled. "But by the time we walked into Montgomery, there were more than 25,000. And that effort led the Congress to debate the Voting Rights Acts and pass that act. And President Johnson signed it into law in August of 1965."