MADISON, Wis. — There’s a lot about 2020 people would like to forget, but when it comes to the protests on civil rights, one group hopes 2021 will bring some of the changes they called for.
It starts with permanent representation at the state capitol, something Boys and Girls Club of Dane County CEO Michael Johnson was first made aware of during the summer protests.
“There was a group of young people on the streets that shared with me that there was no representation of people of color at the state capitol,” Johnson said. “And I don’t know if I couldn’t believe it, but I was like, ‘Black folks and people of color have been in this state for 150 plus years,’ I just couldn’t imagine that being the truth.”
It was true –something Rep. Shelia Stubbs, D-Madison, noticed too.
“I can tell you when I first arrived as an elected official in 2019 in our capitol, I walked the doors, I walked the hallways and I did not see me,” she said.
When Johnson called her wanting to do something about it she had to say yes. He already had – in her eyes and in the eyes of communities around the state – the perfect person in mind.
“There’s no better person to display, and the success she has achieved by a person of color in this state, than Vel Phillips,” Stubbs said.
Phillips was a woman of firsts. First African American woman to graduate from UW-Madison law school, first on the Milwaukee Common Council (“Can you imagine in 1956 becoming the first woman and the first African American member of Milwaukee’s Common Council?” Stubbs said.), first on the bench, first in statewide office.
For six years she got back up time and again after being told no on making housing discrimination illegal, until it finally was.
For a younger Stubbs, Phillips’ work and friendship helped guide her life.
“I would see her at NAACP meetings, very engaged in what was happening,” Stubbs said. “Everyone treated her so well in support. And she let you know who she was with her very quiet tone, and people would come and she’d be like, ‘Oh I’m just Vel,’ and everyone just loved on her.”
Stubbs thinks a statue honoring Phillips is long overdue, and that when Lady Forward and Colonel Heg go back up they should be joined by Phillips on South Hamilton Street.
The project needs some funding, about $250,000, and approval from a government board later this month. Stubbs and Johnson are thinking some public money and private donations will make up the funds, and as far as the green light they hope the impact this could have is convincing enough.
“I think it does our state a disservice when the people who live in our state don’t see representation at the state capitol,” Johnson said. “And I’m optimistic that the chairwoman of the committee, that the legislature and the governor will do the right thing.”
The hearing to move forward on this project is on Jan. 25 with the State Capitol and Executive Residence Board. Johnson hopes to get approval and get the statue up by the end of the year.
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