National Cathedral picks Black artist to replace Confederate stained glass windows

The National Cathedral in Washington, DC, announced Thursday the selection of painter Kerry James Marshall to design racial justice-themed replacements for stained glass depictions of Confederate generals.

"The Cathedral’s commission represents Marshall’s first time working with stained-glass as a medium, and the windows are expected to be his first permanent public exhibition anywhere in the country," the National Cathedral wrote in a press release Thursday.

Marshall, who is Black, is known for his painting work depicting Black people in everyday settings.

According to Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, a retrospective on the first 35 years of Marshall's career hosted there in 2017, his work shows "images of Black subjects going about their daily business, presented with utter equality and humanity."

"Marshall’s figurative paintings have been joyful in their consistent portrayal of African Americans," the museum wrote.

Marshall's new "racial justice" themed panels at the National Cathedral will replace two, installed in 1953, that depicted slaveholding Confederate generals Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson and Robert E. Lee.

Those panels were removed in 2017 after the Cathedral concluded they "are not only inconsistent with our current mission to serve as a house of prayer for all people, but also a barrier to our important work on racial justice and racial reconciliation."