A statue of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose cells were taken without her consent and subsequently used in several major medical breakthroughs, will be built in her hometown in Roanoke, Virginia.
The statue will replace a monument of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. City officials voted to remove the monument after its vandalization during the height of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Trish White-Boyd, Roanoke’s vice-mayor, and the Harrison Museum of African American Culture started fundraising for a public history project to replace the monument.
The Roanoke Hidden Histories initiative raised $183,877, which will be used to cover the cost of the statue and a virtual reality documentary about the town’s history.
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