Billboards honoring SC native Chadwick Boseman pop up around Columbia
Drivers around Columbia may have noticed billboards popping up on their commute honoring actor and South Carolina native Chadwick Boseman on Tuesday.
Boseman, who portrayed King T’Challa in Marvel’s superhero blockbuster “Black Panther” and real-life icons Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and James Brown in other films, died this past Friday after a four-year battle with colon cancer. He was 43.
Boseman’s face, as well as an image of him in costume as T’Challa, are pictured on several billboards in the Columbia area, with the words “Wakanda Forever!” also shown.
The billboards were put up by Lamar Advertising Co., which has a stake in more than 360,000 billboards across the U.S. and Canada, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The company will often use its digital billboards to commemorate the deaths of certain important individuals, a company spokeswoman confirmed to The State.
Boseman’s billboard was designed by one of Lamar’s own artists, David Widrick, and is currently being displayed on 972 billboards across the country, the spokeswoman said.
Many of those billboards are in South Carolina, with “five or six” in the Columbia area — Boseman was born and raised in the town of Anderson.
Since Boseman’s deaths, tributes have poured in from across the state. Gov. Henry McMaster ordered flags at the State House to be flown at half-staff in his honor, and a petition to replace a Confederate memorial in Anderson with a statue of Boseman has garnered more than 18,000 signatures. Anderson will also host a tribute service for Boseman this Thursday.
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 5:30 PM.
