A statue honoring John Lewis will replace a former Confederate monument in Georgia

A Georgia square that was home to a Confederate monument for more than a century will now host a statue of the late civil rights icon John Lewis.

Authorities began installing the sculpture of the former Georgia congressman in Decatur last week ahead of its official unveiling on Saturday.

“It’s exciting to see it going up and exciting for the significance of what it represents and what it’s replacing,” Basil Watson, the artist behind the new statue, said at the installation.

Its arrival comes about four years after Decatur officials removed a 30-foot-tall obelisk erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1908.

That statue was taken down in June of 2020, amid national racial justice protests that erupted across the U.S. following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn. Floyd, who was Black, died after a white police officer pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for more than 9 minutes as he lay facedown, hands cuffed behind his back.

Lewis died in July 2020 at the age of 80 after being diagnosed with advanced-stage pancreatic cancer.

The following summer, a group created by DeKalb County called the John Lewis Commemorative Task Force kicked off its search for a new public art installation at the site of the former Confederate monument.

Watson told Decaturish in 2022 that the 16-foot-tall sculpture of Lewis depicts him with his hands over his heart in a gesture of love that he was fond of.

A civil rights activist, Lewis led sit-ins protesting segregation in the Jim Crow-era South and was beaten alongside other demonstrators 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.