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The Confederate monument called "The Lost Cause" was erected in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the square, the same year the Georgia legislature ratified an amendment to prevent African Americans from voting.
"The Confederate obelisk has become an increasingly frequent target of graffiti and vandalism, a figurative lightning rod for friction among citizens, and a potential catastrophe that could happen at any time if individuals attempt to forcibly remove or destroy it," Judge Clarence Seeliger said in a ruling last June 2020
The text on the base of the monument read as follows:
South Face: "Erected by the men and women and children of Dekalb County, to the memory of the soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy, of whose virtues in peace and in war we are witnesses, to the end that justice may be done and that the truth perish not."
West Face: "After forty two years another generation bears witness to the future that these men were of a covenant keeping race who held fast to the faith as it was given by the fathers of the Republic. Modest in prosperity, gentile in peace, brave in battle, and undespairing in defeat, they knew no law of life but loyalty and truth and civic faith, and to these virtues they consecrated their strength."
North Face: "These men held that the states made the union, that the Constitution is the evidence of the covenant, that the people of the State are subject to no power except as they have agreed, that free convention binds the parties to it, that there is sanctity in oaths and obligations in contracts, and in defense of these principles they mutually pledged their live, their fortunes, and their sacred honor."
East Face: "How well they kept the faith is faintly written in the records of the armies and the history of the times. We who knew them testify that as their courage was without a precedent their fortitude has been without a parallel. May their prosperity be worthy."
John Lewis represented Georgia in the House of Representatives for more than 30 years. He died July 2020 at the age of 80.
EXCERPT FROM
A Georgia city is replacing a Confederate monument with a statue of civil rights hero John Lewis - CNN - January 29, 2021
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/us/georgia-monument-decatur-john-lewis-trnd/index.html
“For 112 years, a 30-foot obelisk stood outside the courthouse grounds in the suburban Atlanta city of Decatur.
Erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, it suggested the Civil War was about state's rights and "Southern honor" instead of the real root cause: slavery.
That structure was finally taken down last year. And in its place, officials now plan to erect a monument that honors the late John Lewis, a man who spent his entire life fighting for civil rights.”