A proposal to replace a statue honoring a white supremacist in the U.S. Capitol with one recognizing the late Billy Graham, one of the most influential religious leaders in American politics, is gaining traction. But the move could draw more attention to Graham's mixed legacy on responding to racism in America.
After Graham's death last week, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, D, wrote a letter asking the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress to approve his state's 2015 request to replace the statue of former governor Charles Aycock in the Capitol's Statuary Hall with a statue of the Christian leader. North Carolina's other statue - each state gets two - is of Zebulon Vance, a former governor who was in an officer in the Confederate Army.
Aycock, a Democratic governor from 1901 to 1905, was known as a segregationist who "used poll taxes, literacy tests and the grandfather clause to keep blacks from voting" and "believed in an 'unending separation of the races,'" the News and Observer reported.
The request comes as Americans grapple with how to honor past leaders with troublesome legacies. Several universities in North Carolina have already removed Aycock's name from buildings.
But despite Graham's evangelical Christian background, the proposal could face pushback from conservatives who have criticized efforts to remove such statues as rewriting history.
Since his death last week, Graham has been praised for how he dealt with racism over the years, but as with many men of his generation, it's not without nuances.
In his book "Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness," Marshall Frady quoted Graham as saying: "I am convinced that some extreme Negro leaders are going too far too fast."
The Rev. Broderick Greer, an activist and priest at Saint John's Cathedral in Denver, wrote for NBC News that Graham was not as forward-thinking when it came to dismantling white supremacy:
"His opposition to the civil rights movement's tactics of transformative disruption, his alignment with the political Religious Right and his failure to preach against the horrors of church-based homophobia and sexism demonstrate the limitations of relegating the gospel of Jesus Christ to little more than eternal fire insurance."
But Graham is mostly remembered as being on the right right side of history. Former President Bill Clinton recalled witnessing the evangelist's commitment to fighting racism firsthand during the school integration struggle in Little Rock, reminding a crowded stadium "that we all come before God as equals, both in our imperfection and our absolute claim to amazing grace."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson praised Graham for his openness to share his faith with multicultural crowds.
"I remember when he opened his doors ... to integrate, and at that time, it was a tough call," Jackson told CBSN, CBS's streaming news channel, last week.
In July 1957, Graham, after noticing his audiences were overwhelmingly white, invited the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to give a public prayer at a large evangelical gathering at Madison Square Garden in New York.
"A great social revolution is going on in the United States today," Graham said at the time.
Graham's writings and words show that he had a higher view of diversity than many of the leaders currently honored with statues in the U.S. Capitol, though we have to take into account how dominant white supremacy was as a worldview throughout much of American history.
While many will agree that Graham is a vast improvement over Aycock, others are calling on lawmakers not to overstate the religious leaders' impact on tearing down the barriers against people of color that Aycock helped build in North Carolina and beyond.