Vel Phillips was a distinguished civil rights activist and politician in Wisconsin, celebrated for her groundbreaking accomplishments in public service. In 1956, she became the first Black person and woman elected to the Milwaukee Common Council, marking a historic achievement. She continued to break barriers by becoming the first Black woman elected to the Democratic Party’s National Committee while serving on Wisconsin’s state committee.
In 1978, as a staunch advocate for equal housing, Phillips made history once again by being elected as Wisconsin’s secretary of state, becoming the first Black woman in the United States to be elected statewide to an executive office.
More than six years after her passing, Phillips’s pioneering legacy endures with a new sculpture unveiled at Madison’s Capitol Square in late July. This sculpture is noted by community members as the first of a Black woman to be installed outside a state capitol building in the country.
A 2021 audit by Monument Lab found that only six percent of U.S. monuments represent women, and merely ten percent honor Black or Indigenous people. Created by the late artist Radcliffe Bailey, this artwork joins other state capitol statues that celebrate key figures in Black American history, such as statues of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass in Maryland’s statehouse, the Little Rock Nine memorial in Arkansas, the Martin Luther King Jr. monument outside Georgia’s capitol, and statues of Mary McLeod Bethune and Rosa Parks in the National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C.
The new statue stands at the capitol, where two statues were previously removed by protesters during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
Michael Johnson, who led the project, told Madison365, “The young people of Wisconsin and future generations need to see that representation matters, and they need to see heroes and leaders who reflect the diversity of our communities.” He also pointed out the absence of prominent artworks in the Capitol building that recognize the contributions of African Americans.
In November 2021, SCERB gave unanimous approval to the plan.
The unveiling of the sculpture coincides with another tragic police shooting that has sparked outrage among racial justice advocates—the death of 36-year-old Sonya Massey in Illinois. Earlier this month, Massey was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy after she called the authorities for help with a suspected intruder, echoing the deaths of Breonna Taylor and Atatiana Jefferson, who were also killed by police in their homes.
In the wake of Massey’s death, Madison’s new statue, which honors a woman committed to dismantling racial injustice, provides a glimmer of hope for a future where such change is achievable.
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