By Barbara Goldberg

(Reuters) – The Washington National Cathedral is replacing stained glass windows featuring Confederate symbols with racial-justice themed pieces in a display created by two Black American artists, the site said on Thursday.

After removing the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Richmond’s monument, the U.S. second-largest cathedral made the announcement on Thursday. This was in response to protests about racial injustice.

The cathedral also featured Lee in its stained glass windows, which were removed after white nationalist violence at Charlottesville in September 2017.

“The windows that featured Lee and Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson “did not address the painful legacy and reality of America’s original sins of slavery and racism,” said the Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith is the cathedral’s Dean.

Hollerith stated that new windows by Kerry James Marshall (a Black American artist) will be used to “share a more complete story to tell the truth of our past and lift up what we aspire to become,”

According to a spokesperson for the cathedral, these “racially-justice-themed” windows will be installed permanently in 2023.

A cathedral spokesman also said that Elizabeth Alexander (a Black poet) will compose a new piece, “that will inscribed in stone tablets alongside Marshall’s window installation. This will overlay the existing stone tablets, which honored the lives and sacrifices of Confederate soldiers.”

The Confederacy is a pro-slavery Southern state group that seceded in 1861 and 1965 Civil War. Anti-racism protests targeted art including statues of Confederacy leaders.

A towering Lee statue was removed earlier this month in front of a crowd cheering from Richmond, Virginia. Richmond is the Confederate capital. The governor had promised to remove it in June 2020. This was days after George Floyd (a Black man) was shot and killed in Minneapolis by a white officer. It sparked nationwide protests.

Nearly four years after white supremacist protests against plans to remove the statue led to violent clashes that saw a woman run and hit by a car, leading to another Lee statue being taken down in Charlottesville.