Light shines by new stained-glass home windows with a theme of racial justice throughout an unveiling and dedication ceremony on the Washington National Cathedral for the home windows on Saturday, Sept. 23 in Washington.

Nick Wass/AP

cover caption

toggle caption

Nick Wass/AP

Light shines by new stained-glass home windows with a theme of racial justice throughout an unveiling and dedication ceremony on the Washington National Cathedral for the home windows on Saturday, Sept. 23 in Washington.

Nick Wass/AP

Six years after two stained-glass home windows that honored Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson were taken down, the Washington National Cathedral has unveiled the pair of home windows which can be taking their place.

The home windows, titled “Now and Forever,” had been created by artist Kerry James Marshall and focus on racial justice. The pictures present a gaggle of protesters marching in numerous instructions and holding up massive indicators that learn “Fairness” and “No Foul Play.”

The new home windows “lift up the values of justice and fairness and the ongoing struggle for equality among all God’s great children,” the Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, the cathedral’s dean, stated on Saturday on the unveiling.

He stated the earlier home windows “were offensive and they were a barrier to the ministry of this cathedral and they were antithetical to our call to be a house of prayer for all people.”

“They told a false narrative extolling two individuals who fought to keep the institution of slavery alive in this country,” he added.

The earlier home windows had been a fixture on the home of worship in Washington, D.C., for greater than 60 years. Created in 1953, the home windows pay tribute to Lee and Jackson, showcasing scenes from their lives in addition to the Confederate battle flag.

After nine Black worshippers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina had been killed by a white supremacist in 2015, the cathedral’s dean on the time, Gary Hall, referred to as for the Confederate tribute home windows to be eliminated.

The Confederate flags had been eliminated in 2016 and the home windows had been taken down in 2017. The cathedral additionally launched the seek for its substitute. In 2021, the cathedral chosen Kerry James Marshall because the artist tasked with creating racial justice-themed home windows. Marshall, whose work have been on the Met, the National Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, has devoted his profession illustrating Black lives and Black tradition on canvas.

On Saturday, the Washington National Cathedral debuted the brand new home windows, in addition to a poem inscribed in stone tablets close to the home windows titled “American Song” by Elizabeth Alexander. The poem was particularly composed for the event. Here is a variety from the poem:

A single voice raised, then one other. We

should inform the reality about our historical past.

How did we get right here and the place will we go?

Walk towards freedom. Work towards freedom.

Believe in beloved group.