Wisconsin, in a first, to unveil a Black woman’s statue at its Capitol

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — About 1,000 people are expected at a gala event this weekend as Wisconsin finally honors a person of color with a statue at its state Capitol.

Workers lowered the shrouded statue of Wisconsin Secretary of State Vel Phillips into position outside a Capitol entrance Tuesday, and then encased it in a crate ahead of Saturday’s unveiling.

“This is beautiful,” said Michael Johnson, a civil rights advocate who came up with the idea and led efforts to raise $700,000 to cover the costs.

Black actor Larenz Tate is set to host, with Gov. Tony Evers and Phillips’ son, Michael, among the attendees.

It’s rare for Black leaders to be honored this way at capitols, although there are some examples around the country.

Statues of the Little Rock Nine, the first Black students to enter Little Rock’s segregated Central High School in 1957, stand outside the Arkansas Capitol building. A statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stands outside Georgia’s Capitol. And seated Rosa Parks was the first full-length statue of a Black person to be installed inside the U.S. Capitol, honoring the woman who refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955.

Phillips broke a long list of barriers as the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, to win a seat on the Milwaukee City Council and to become a judge in Wisconsin. Then she became the first woman and Black person elected to statewide office in Wisconsin, serving as secretary of state from 1979 to 1983. She died in 2018 at age 95.

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