A statue honoring the late civil rights hero and US Congressman John Lewis has replaced a Confederate monument in Georgia.
On Saturday (August 24), the John Lewis Memorial was unveiled in Decatur Square in front of the Historic Decatur Courthouse, per CNN. The statue, created by Jamaican sculptor Basil Watson, stands 12 feet tall and depicts Lewis with his hands over his heart.
Lewis, a prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement, was one of the original Freedom Riders who protested segregation in the 1960s by riding segregated buses. Lewis was also one of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders who organized the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
In 1965, Lewis was among the peaceful civil rights marchers who were beaten by police in Alabama during the first Selma to Montgomery march in what later became known as "Bloody Sunday." Lewis was elected to serve as a US representative for Georgia’s 5th Congressional District in 1987. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Lewis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Lewis continued his work as a congressman until he died in 2020.
Prior to the erection of the John Lewis Memorial, a 30-foot Confederate obelisk stood in Decatur Square for more than 110 years.
The Confederate statue came under scrutiny in the wake of George Floyd's murder. In June 2020, a Georgia judge ordered its removal.
“A monument that represented bigotry, division and hatred will be replaced, by a monument to a man who loved, who cherished this nation and brought all people of all colors together,” DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond previously said.
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