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A statue of the late Congressman John Lewis, who was known for causing “good trouble” in his pursuit of racial justice, was installed in his honor on Friday. The statue replaced a controversial Confederate monument that had stood outside a Georgia county courthouse since 1908 before it was removed in 2020, CBS News reports.
The stately, 12-foot-tall statue of Rep. Lewis was commissioned by internationally renowned sculptor Basil Barrington Watson, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and has lived in Georgia since 2002, according to the New York Times.
As the statue was being erected outside the Dekalb County Courthouse in Decatur, Georgia Watson watched. She told CBS News it was “exciting to see the statue being erected and exciting for the city because of what it represents and what it replaces.”
Representative Lewis was deeply committed to civil rights issues long before his time as a 17-term congressman representing his Georgia district. He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which grew out of student-organized sit-ins against Jim Crow segregation laws.
Lewis was also one of the original 13 Freedom Riders who rode through the South to protest racial segregation on public transportation – and were met with unbridled violence from angry mobs. At a Greyhound bus stop in Montgomery, Lewis was hit in the head with a wooden box. In a CNN interview, Lewis recalled the incident: “It was very brutal. I thought I was going to die. I was left unconscious at the Greyhound bus stop in Montgomery.”
Lewis was also the youngest organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, and he led marches during the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign. During a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Lewis was attacked by police so brutally that he suffered a fractured skull. He bore the scars of this incident for the rest of his life. Hundreds of other nonviolent protesters were also attacked, and the day became known as Bloody Sunday.
During segregation, many states erected Confederate statues to enforce the idea of white supremacy. The 30-foot-tall stone obelisk that Rep. Lewis’ statue replaces was erected in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization responsible for creating many Confederate monuments and memorials, the NY Times reports.
Local activists had been calling for the obelisk’s removal for years, including in 2017 after the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville that left one protester dead. At the time, officials said they were prevented from removing the obelisk by state law.
In 2019, the Dekalb County Board of Commissioners placed a plaque in front of the obelisk to contextualize its racist origins. Among other things, it said the obelisk “reinforced white supremacy and faulty history, suggesting that the cause of the Civil War was based on Southern honor and states’ rights rhetoric – rather than its true catalyst – African American slavery.” The statue was finally removed in 2020. As it was lifted from its pedestal, onlookers chanted “Just drop it!” CBS News reports.
Once installed, the Lewis statue will be officially unveiled on Saturday, August 24.
