A statue of the late civil rights icon and Georgia congressman John Lewis replaced a Confederate monument at the Dekalb County Courthouse.
The 12-foot-tall bronze statue replaced a Confederate monument that stood for more than 110 years in Decatur square before it was dismantled in 2020.
Basil Watson, the internationally acclaimed sculptor who designed the statue told The Associated Press: “It’s exciting to see it going up and exciting for the city because of what he represents and what it’s replacing.”
Lewis was known for his role in the Civil Rights Movement where he urged others to get in ‘good trouble.” In 1965, Lewis was beaten during a march in Selma, Ala., on the Edmund Pettus Bridge alongside many other civil rights leaders.
Groups like the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights and Hate Free Decatur were demanding the Confederate state’s removal since 2017 when white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Va.
Those calls intensified in 2020 amid Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd by police.
The city of Decatur asked a Georgia judge to order the removal of the monument after it was regularly vandalized and marked with graffiti during the protests, according to The Hill.
City officials argued at the time that the monument had become a threat to public safety.
Lewis represented Georgia in Congress for over three decades before he died in 2020 after succumbing to pancreatic cancer. The statue will be officially unveiled on Aug. 24.
