Representative John Lewis thanks anti-gun violence advocates after a rally outside the U.S. Capitol on October 4, 2017.
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America
Georgia Square, which has been home to a Confederate monument for more than a century, will now be home to a statue of late civil rights icon John Lewis.
Last week, authorities began installing a statue of the former Georgia congressman in Decatur ahead of an official dedication ceremony on Saturday.
“It’s exciting to see it erected and exciting because of the significance of what it represents and what it replaces,” said Basil Watson, the artist behind the new statue, speak at the installation site.
Its appearance came about four years after Decatur officials REMOVE A 30-foot tall obelisk erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1908.
The statue was torn down in June 2020, amid nationwide protests for racial justice. boom across America after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn. Floyd, a black man, died after a white police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck in over 9 minutes As he lay face down, his hands were cuffed behind his back.
A large bronze statue of late civil rights leader and politician Congressman John Lewis was installed last week in Decatur, Georgia, where a Confederate monument was removed in 2020.
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Ron Harris/AP
Lewis dead in July 2020 at the age of 80 after being diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.
The following summer, a group formed by DeKalb County called the John Lewis Memorial Task Force has started is looking for a new public art installation at the site of the former Confederate monument.
Watson speak Loss of character In 2022, a 16-foot-tall sculpture of Lewis depicts him with his hands over his heart in a loving gesture he was fond of.
As a civil rights activist, Lewis led a sit-in protesting segregation in the Jim Crow-era South and was beaten with other protesters during a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965.
Lewis was first elected to Congress in 1987, where he served as a Democrat until his death four years ago.
