A statue of the late Congressman John Lewis, known for stirring up “good trouble” in his quest for racial justice, was installed in his honor on Friday. The statue replaced a contentious confederate monument that stood in front of a Georgia County Courthouse since 1908 before its removal in 2020, reports CBS News.
The stately 12-foot-tall statue of Rep. Lewis was commissioned by internationally acclaimed sculptor Basil Barrington Watson, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica and has lived in Georgia since 2002, according to the NY Times.
As the statue was placed in front of the Dekalb County Courthouse in Decatur, Georgia Watson looked on, sharing with CBS News that it was “exciting to see it going up and exciting for the city because of what he represents and what it’s replacing.”
Rep. Lewis was deeply committed to civil rights long before he became the congressman who served his Georgia district for 17 terms. He was co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which grew out of student-led sit-ins that challenged Jim Crow segregation.
Lewis was also one of the 13 original Freedom Riders, who rode across the South to protest segregation in public transportation—and was met with unbridled violence by angry mobs. At a Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, Lewis was hit in the head with a wooden crate. Recalling the incident in a CNN interview, Lewis said, “It was very violent. I thought I was going to die. I was left lying at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery unconscious.”
Lewis was also the youngest person to help organize the 1963 March on Washington, and he led marches during the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign. During one march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Lewis was attacked so viciously by Alabama State Troopers that his skull was fractured—he carried the scars from that incident for the rest of his life. Hundreds of other nonviolent demonstrators were also attacked and the day became known as Bloody Sunday.
Segregation was a time when many states erected Confederate statues as a means of enforcing the idea of white supremacy. The 30-foot stone obelisk, which Rep. Lewis statue replaces, had been installed in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization that was responsible for the creation of many Confederate monuments and memorials, reports the NY Times.
Local activists had been calling for the removal of the obelisk for years, including in 2017 after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally in which one protester was killed. Back then, officials said they were blocked from removing it by state law.
In 2019, the Dekalb County Board of Commissioners placed a plaque in front of the obelisk to contextualize its racist origins, saying in part that it “bolstered white supremacy and faulty history, suggesting that the cause for the Civil War rested on southern honor and states’ rights rhetoric – instead of its real catalyst – African-American slavery.” The statue was finally removed in 2020. As it was lifted from its base, onlookers chanted, “Just drop it!” CBS News reports.
Now that it’s been installed, the statue of Lewis will be officially unveiled on Saturday, August 24th.