Black History Month is here, and unfortunately, one of our most cherished heroes is battling advanced pancreatic cancer. Civil rights legend and Rep. John Lewis has always shown an “incomparable will to fight.” He has been arrested, assaulted and nearly killed multiple times while always maintaining his commitment to non-violence and to his faith.
Lewis rose to prominence during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the youngest of the “Big Six” (Martin Luther King Jr.; Justin Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality; A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first labor union led by and for black people; Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP at the time; and Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League, one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the country).
He has greatly influenced the implementation of countless laws and helped end legalized racial segregation. Lewis is currently serving in his 17th term as the representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district.
Recently, Lewis’ supporters created an online petition to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma after Lewis (who marched with King and other prominent activists on that fateful “Bloody Sunday” in 1965), which made me realize that Georgia has no major landmarks named after Lewis.
Georgia should build a statue in Lewis’ honor. Major landmarks like Stone Mountain and the Georgia State Capitol honor the Confederacy. These memorials are a horrendous and incomplete representation of the history of Georgia.
Lewis’ core principles serve as a greatly improved image for future generations. Replacing these racist and immoral images with someone who stood for peace and equality can only help Georgia’s image.
Valerie Matthews is an English professor at Georgia State who specializes in African American literature. Her past courses included the first of Lewis’ three-part graphic novel memoir “MARCH,” and in 2015, Matthews served as a moderator when Lewis spoke on campus.
“I believe a statue dedicated to John Lewis would be a declaration that most of the citizens of Georgia are working toward unity rather than division and that we are committed to the fight for human rights and equal justice that John Lewis’ legacy represents,” Matthews said. “It’s important for African American students to know more about their own culture, and it’s important for all students to understand what a huge impact the institution of slavery and its lingering effects have had on our contemporary American culture.”
Maurice Hobson is an assistant professor of African American studies and a historian at Georgia State. The author of “The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta” agrees that Lewis is more than deserving of a statue, but he also believes the statue should be in the capital of Lewis’ home state of Alabama.
“John Lewis came to Atlanta and was considered to be an outcast amongst black Atlanta until the mid-1980s, when Julian Bond failed to campaign for Congress,” Hobson said. “His rise as a civil rights activist took place [in Alabama], bringing [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] to Alabama State College, now University with the work in Selma but also his work in the Birmingham campaign [of 1963] as well as Montgomery in organizing students. Alabama State University is in Montgomery, Alabama’s state capital.”
The Selma native believes Lewis’ legacy originated and is cemented in Alabama, so Alabama would be most fitting of a statue in his honor.
Although Alabama is most significant to Lewis’ story, he is also extremely significant to Georgia. Lewis is a national treasure, but we have been blessed to call a hero like him a representative of our state. Creating a monument that will forever carry his legacy and lesson will help create the community Lewis dreamed of.
