Georgia Republicans pitch plan to put Hank Aaron statue at U.S. Capitol

Key Georgia lawmakers got behind a plan three years ago to remove the statue of Confederate leader Alexander Stephens from the U.S. Capitol, but their negotiations stalled amid disputes over whose likeness should replace it.

Now, a Georgia Republican is pitching a compromise: Atlanta Braves legend Hank Aaron, the late baseball hero who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record.

“There’s nothing more American than baseball, and no one personifies American values more than Hank Aaron,” said state Rep. Trey Kelley, a six-term GOP lawmaker from Cedartown.

“He used his influence to advance civil rights, inspire entrepreneurship and hammer home the Georgia we know today,” he added.

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Kelley’s proposal reopens a long-running debate over who should represent Georgia at the U.S. Capitol. And it comes as other Southern states are revisiting their selections to the National Statuary Hall.

He was quickly echoed by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the president of the Senate. Jones called Aaron a “hero to Georgians everywhere and deserves to be honored in a way that reflects his stature and his commitment to Georgia values.”

Jones added: “I can’t think of anyone better to be honored with one of our two statues in the U.S. Capitol than Hank Aaron.”

There’s broad consensus over removing Stephens, a white supremacist who was the vice president of the Confederacy and famously denounced the Declaration of Independence’s contention that “all men are created equal.”

But a bipartisan proposal to replace it with the likeness of the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the Democratic civil rights leader, failed to gain traction despite support from Gov. Brian Kemp, then-House Speaker David Ralston and then-Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.

Credit: Jason Getz

Credit: Jason Getz

Federal law signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864 gave each state the final say on which two statues to display at the U.S. Capitol, and Southern states often deployed the law in the 1920s to honor Confederate war heroes and segregationist leaders.

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Georgia’s all-white General Assembly voted in 1926 to use one of its statues to honor Crawford Long, a 19th century physician who pioneered the use of ether in surgery. A year later, lawmakers added a stone version of Stephens to the display.

Even then, the Stephens pick was controversial. An avowed secessionist, Stephens maintained in his famous “Cornerstone Speech” that slavery was the “natural and normal condition” of Black people.

The Stephens statue was seen as a clear political statement at a time when Jim Crow laws and Black voter suppression reigned over the post-Reconstruction South. Nearly a century later, it still stands, though calls to remove Stephens’ image have intensified amid a broader reckoning of the role of Confederate imagery in modern American society.

One was mounted a few years ago by then-Republican state Rep. Scot Turner, whose measure to supplant Stephens with a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. went nowhere. Turner said Wednesday that he applauded the Aaron initiative.

“It’s time to put that statue in a museum and honor a different Georgian in that hallowed place,” said Turner, who now runs a nonprofit.

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Some of Stephens’ kin are also open to the idea. In 2017, several of his relatives wrote an open letter to then-Gov. Nathan Deal and legislative leaders calling for the statue and those of other Confederate leaders to be removed so “that the descendants of enslaved people no longer walk beneath them at work and on campus.”

If successful, Georgia would join other states that have withdrawn statues of divisive or racist figures at Statuary Hall.

Florida two years ago replaced the statue of a Confederate general with one honoring Mary McLeod Bethune, a Black educator. And North Carolina unveiled a statue of the Rev. Billy Graham to replace one of a white supremacist who served as governor.

Still, even with support from powerful Republicans, an Aaron-for-Stephens trade is not assured.

Talk of an Aaron statue a few years ago never got far. Kelley‘s plan can’t be voted on until legislators reconvene in January. Kemp is not taking a stance yet, letting the General Assembly take the lead. And other legislative leaders didn’t immediately weigh in.

There’s also a question about whether Aaron’s family would even want the honor. Three years ago, Democratic state Rep. Teri Anulewicz halted a plan to rename the I-75 bridge spanning the Chattahoochee River for Aaron.

At the time, the family objected over concerns it would “dredge up all the racism and acrimony” tied to renaming a bridge that’s now named for Lester Maddox, a former segregationist governor, and his wife, Virginia.

“I definitely support honoring Hank Aaron’s legacy as an athletic legend and as a staunch trailblazer for civil rights, and understand that any tributes to his contributions to Georgia must be done with the blessing and support of his family,” Anulewicz said.

She suggested that Democratic U.S. Rep. David Scott, Aaron’s brother-in-law, help broker a compromise. Still, Kelley is optimistic that his colleagues will embrace the idea.

“It’s time Georgia unites,” he said, “and recognizes one of our favorite sons on Capitol Hill.”