Graham, who was from North Carolina and became an internationally known evangelist preacher, died in 2018. The statue was given to the U.S. Capitol by the state in 2024 and was created by Chas Fagan.

North Carolina, for example, is replacing a statue of Charles Aycock, a former governor and white supremacist, with one of the Rev. Billy Graham. But the process is painfully slow.

The South Carolina Capitol grounds will soon include a statue of Robert Smalls, a formerly enslaved Civil War hero, among the statues of five white men, most with ties to the Civil War or Jim Crow.