Rep. John Lewis statue replaces Confederate memorial in Georgia

Aug. 24 (UPI) -- A 12-foot bronze statue of the late civil rights activist and U.S. Rep. John Lewis was unveiled Saturday in Decatur, Ga.

Lewis represented Georgia's Fifth Congressional District, which includes most of Atlanta, from 1987 until his death in 2020.

Sculptor Basil Watson of Jamaica created the statue , which depicts Lewis holding his hands across his heart and is situated atop a stone pedestal.

The statue was installed in Decatur Square on Aug. 16 and unveiled Saturday.

Lewis was a civil rights leader and a Democrat who was among the first "freedom riders" who rode on segregated buses during the 1960s to protest racial discrimination and segregation in the South.

Lewis formerly chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was a member of the "big six" civil rights leaders who organized the history "march on Washington," during which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Alabama state troopers and local police in 1965 physically beat Lewis, which triggered the inaugural Selma to Montgomery march.

President Barack Obama in 2011 bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom upon Lewis for his efforts on behalf of equality and civil rights.

The statue replaces a stone obelisk standing 30 feet high and erected in 1908 outside the DeKalb County Courthouse.

It was placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and honored the "memory of the soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy, of whose virtues in peace and in war are witnesses to the end that justice may be done and that the truth perish not."

The obelisk contained inscriptions on all four sides that referenced the underlying principles of the Confederacy.

The obelisk became a point of contention during the civil unrest that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.