MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A statue of the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon, has been unveiled in Alabama’s capital metropolis.
The likeness, known as Steadfast Stride Toward Justice, sits within the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Plaza in Montgomery. It joins statues of Rosa Parks, unveiled in February, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., unveiled in June, AL.com reported.
Atlanta-based sculptor Basil Watson created all three statues, which stand throughout from the initiative’s Legacy Museum in Montgomery.
“I simply assume all the state of Alabama owes John Lewis a lot as a result of he pulled us all out of the darkness of Jim Crow and racial segregation,” mentioned the initiative’s government director, Bryan Stevenson. “He created the alternatives that we get to have fun in so a lot of our public areas, from soccer fields to basketball locations. It wouldn’t have been doable with out his braveness.”
In addition to the statues, the plaza contains a brick sculpture memorializing civil rights marchers and a mural by native artist Kevin King.
Lewis was a local of Pike County, Alabama, and is understood for main lots of throughout the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965, a day now often known as “Bloody Sunday.”
He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and to Congress in 1986, the place he served 17 phrases within the U.S. House from Georgia’s fifth District. He died in 2020 at age 80.
Former President Barack Obama awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.
“Generations from now, when dad and mom train their kids what is supposed by braveness, the story of John Lewis will come to thoughts an American who knew that change couldn’t await another particular person or another time; whose life is a lesson within the fierce urgency of now,” the previous president mentioned throughout the ceremony.
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