This bronze sculpture marks a significant milestone, as community members celebrate it as the first sculptural rendering of a Black woman installed outside a state capitol building in the United States.
Vel Phillips was renowned for her groundbreaking achievements throughout her long career in public service. In 1956, she became both the first Black person and the first woman to serve on the Milwaukee Common Council. She continued to shatter barriers by winning a position on Wisconsin’s state committee and later becoming the first Black woman elected to the Democratic Party’s National Committee. Her historic victories culminated in 1978 when she was elected as Wisconsin’s secretary of state, making her the first Black woman in the nation to be elected statewide to an executive office.
The new statue, crafted by the late artist Radcliffe Bailey, joins a distinguished group of monuments across the country that honor Black American history, such as the Little Rock Nine memorial in Arkansas, and the statues of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass inside Maryland’s state house. It stands alongside tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. in Georgia and to Rosa Parks and Mary McLeod Bethune in Washington, D.C.
The journey to this statue’s unveiling began in 2020, amid the nationwide protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd. Michael Johnson, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, initiated the project during this period of intense civil unrest. Johnson’s proposal to honor Phillips came after protesters in Madison toppled statues of abolitionist Hans Christian Heg and other historical figures, highlighting the stark absence of monuments dedicated to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) individuals. In June 2020, he submitted a proposal to the State Capitol and Executive Residence Board (SCERB), offering to finance the sculpture privately through a dedicated task force.
“The young people of Wisconsin and generations thereafter need to see that representation matters,” Johnson wrote, emphasizing the importance of heroes and leaders who reflect the diversity of the community. By November 2021, SCERB had unanimously approved the plan, and the group successfully raised $700,000 for the project. The funds covered the commissioning of the statue and the organization of the unveiling event.
The statue’s inauguration arrives amidst a backdrop of continued racial tensions and recent tragedies, such as the police killing of Sonya Massey in Illinois. Massey’s death, following those of Breonna Taylor and Atatiana Jefferson, underscores the ongoing struggle for racial justice. Against this somber context, Madison’s new statue stands as a beacon of hope and a reminder of Vel Phillips’s enduring legacy in the fight for equality and justice.
