Following the death of Congressman John Lewis, all of Georgia’s members of Congress asked the state Legislature to replace the statue of the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, in the U.S. Capitol with a statue of Lewis. Each state is allotted two statues on Capitol grounds.
Republican State Rep. Tommy Benton has lost a leadership position for speaking out against that proposal and publicly disparaging Lewis’ career.
As originally reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Benton told Commerce, Georgia, radio station WJJC that Lewis’ “only claim to fame was that he got conked on the head at the [Edmund] Pettus Bridge. And he has milked that for 50 years.”
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