"JOHN LEWIS!"

 “JOHN LEWIS!”

On Saturday, Caroline and I had the privilege of joining hundreds of others to participate in the unveiling of a statue of John Lewis on the courthouse square in Decatur and Dekalb County.  There is quite a story behind this unveiling.  It stood in the space previously occupied by an obelisk in honor of Confederate soldiers, an obelisk that had been erected in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  At the same time, they erected a cannon celebrating the “Indian Wars of 1836,” in which Native American Muscogees had been forced out of Georgia as part of the Trail of Tears.  Both of these monuments occupied land in the Decatur square for over 100 years.  It was part of a successful movement by the burgeoning Confederacy in the first decade of the 20th century to venerate the “Lost Cause” and to re-affirm the neo-slavery that had been re-established in the South after the dismantling of Reconstruction.

Over the years, many people protested these monuments to racism and neo-slavery, but the main energy came from the jolt of the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia in the summer of 2017.  The state of Georgia passed laws that prohibited the removal of Confederate statues on public land, and many people felt stymied because it was felt that nothing could be done about these statues.  As Dekalb County CEO Michael Thurmond put it at the unveiling on Saturday, young people and activists pushed and pushed on this, seeking to find a way to remove these offensive statues.  The Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights was especially forceful and creative in seeking to find ways to get these statues removed.  Dekalb County Commissioner Mereda Davis Johnson was a leader in the county to get it removed.  After the obelisk was vandalized, and many protest gatherings were held at the statue, the city of Decatur went to magistrate court in 2020 to get the obelisk declared a public nuisance and safety issue, with the atmosphere juiced up because of the police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota.

    In early June, 2020, Superior Court Clarence Seeliger (who was near retirement) ruled that the obelisk was indeed a public nuisance and safety hazard, and he ordered Dekalb County to remove it.  CEO Thurmond recalled on Saturday that when the court order came down, his assistant asked him if he wanted him to file an appeal of the order.  Mr. Thurmond said “Not only no, but HELL NO – excuse my language.”  There were protests from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who asked that the order be reconsidered, but Judge Seeliger refused.  

    I remember the night that the obelisk was removed.  It was removed by the County late at night because of the fear of protests and even worse from the right-wing.  Downtown Decatur streets were blocked off, and a demolition crew went to work removing the obelisk.  We went down to see part of it, and our friend Lorri Mills stayed for the entire removal, and with no small amount of irony, Dekalb County removed it in the early morning hours of Juneteenth – June 19, 2020.  The Task Force to Design the Statue met a lot and commissioned Basil Watson to sculp it.  Mereda and Decatur Mayor Patti Garrett raised over $700,000 to pay for the sculpting.

    There was quite a lineup of luminaries at Saturday’s gathering Decatur Square.  Jennifer Holliday sang so powerfully – the two national anthems (Star Spangled Banner and Lift Ev’ry Voice), “Everything Must Change” and “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”  Senator Raphael Warnock spoke, as did Congresswoman Nikema Williams (who now holds John Lewis’ old Congressional seat in the 5th district – our Congresswoman).  Mereda gave a powerful speech (full disclosure here – she is the daughter-in-law of our longtime Oakhurst friend Christine Callier and spouse of Congressman Hank Johnson), and I was so glad to see her get such fine recognition.  As I noted, CEO Michael Thurmond gave a fine speech, and he noted that he is near the end of his term-limited CEO office in Dekalb County – I hope that he will run for governor in 2026.  He introduced Mereda by noting that she was one of the first Dekalb County Commissioners to welcome him as CEO.  She told him that he would do well as CEO – if he would always do what she advised him to do.  And, he has been a fine CEO, so he must have listened well!

    There was thunderous applause when the statue was unveiled, and I look forward to taking some time soon to go and look at it more carefully and meditate on the witness of John Lewis, a rural Black boy from Troy, Alabama, dubbed “the boy from Troy” by his mentor and preacher Martin Luther King, Jr.  Lewis grew to be a giant in the hearts of so many of us, from his boarding the Freedom Rider busses in Alabama to his wrestling with A. Philip Randolph at the great March on Washington – Randolph had been commissioned to try to get Lewis to tone down his speech – to his fateful crossing of the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma in 1965.  What a man – what a witness!

    On our way out from the ceremony, I was telling Caroline that Michael Thurmond was on fire today, and an older Black couple walking nearby said “Amen – he sure was.”  We chatted about how glad we were that this had taken place, and I noticed that the man had a Barack Obama 2008 T-shirt on.  I remarked that we had been fortunate enough to attend the Obama inauguration in 2009.  He indicated that he was hoping for another Black person to be inaugurated in 2025, and as we parted ways, he said:  “See y’all in DC in January!”  May it be so.