A 12-foot-tall bronze statue of John Lewis, the iconic civil rights leader and congressman, was installed in front of the DeKalb County Courthouse in Decatur, Georgia, where a Confederate memorial once stood for over a century. This space was previously occupied by a 30-foot stone obelisk erected in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which was known for promoting the Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War. The obelisk was removed in 2020 after a judge declared it a "public nuisance."
"John Lewis was a giant in the civil rights movement and a champion for justice," said a DeKalb County official, highlighting the significance of the new statue. The bronze sculpture stands in the heart of the district that Lewis represented in Congress for 17 consecutive terms.
Before entering politics, Lewis was a key figure in the civil rights movement. He was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders who protested segregation on public transportation in 1961. As a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lewis played a crucial role in organizing sit-ins and other forms of peaceful protest. He also helped plan the 1963 March on Washington and led the historic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, where he was brutally beaten by state troopers. "We were beaten, tear-gassed, trampled by horses, but we did not turn back," Lewis later recalled of that day.
After Lewis passed away from pancreatic cancer in July 2020, a task force was created to find a fitting way to honor his legacy. "We wanted to create a lasting tribute to his extraordinary life," said a task force member. The decision was made to replace the Confederate monument with a statue of Lewis, and in January 2021, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the plan. Artist Basil Barrington Watson, who moved to Georgia from Jamaica in 2002, was selected to sculpt the statue, which will be officially unveiled on August 24, 2024.
The statue's installation marks a profound transformation of a site once dedicated to Confederate memory into one celebrating a leader who fought tirelessly for equality and justice.
Link: NY Times
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