A statue honoring civil rights hero and U.S. Congressman John Lewis will be unveiled outside Atlanta on Saturday, replacing a Confederate monument that had stood there for more than a century.
Famous Jamaican sculptor Basil Watson created the statue, which was named the John Lewis Memorial, and it was installed on August 16 in Decatur Square in front of the historic Decatur Courthouse.
The statue is 12 feet tall, stands on a granite base, and depicts Lewis with his hands on his heart, a gesture he often used to express his love for others.
An icon of civil rights
Lewis, a hero and prominent leader of the civil rights movement, was a lifelong Democrat who fought for social issues and equality.
Lewis was one of the original Freedom Riders who rode on segregated buses to protest racial segregation in the South in the 1960s. He chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was one of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders who organized the March on Washington at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
In 1965, Lewis was brutally beaten by Alabama police and state police while leading hundreds of peaceful civil rights activists in the first Selma to Montgomery march, known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Lewis served as a U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020. In 2011, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama for his lifelong commitment to civil rights and equality.
Replacing a symbol of division
A 30-foot-tall Confederate obelisk, erected in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, previously stood in Decatur Square for more than 110 years.
On all four sides of the base were inscriptions celebrating the ideals of the Confederacy. The inscriptions claimed that those who erected the monument were witnesses to the future, not knowing that one day it would be torn down and replaced by a new symbol of peace and progress.
The obelisk came into the national spotlight as a symbol of division during the summer protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
A judge in Georgia ordered the obelisk’s removal in June 2020, saying it was a public nuisance and a focal point for protests and vandalism. Crowds cheered when a construction crew tore down the statue later that month.
“A monument that stood for bigotry, division and hatred is being replaced by a monument to a man who loved this nation, who cherished it and who brought people of all colors together,” DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond said in 2022, noting that the removal of the Confederate monument in 2020 was “one of the proudest moments” of his tenure.
CNN’s Devon M. Sayers contributed to this report.
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