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, Va.
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.
"Today, in Roanoke, Virginia, at Lacks Plaza, we acknowledge that she was not only significant, she was literate and she was as relevant as any historic figure in the world today," attorney Ben Crump, shi represents the Lacks family.
Artist Bryce Cobbs, another Roanoke native who is involved in the project, debuted a preliminary sketch of the statue at Monday's press conference. The statue is scheduled to be completed in October 2023, in the renamed Henrietta Lacks Plaza, previously known as Lee Plaza.
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