On July 27, a new, historic statue was unveiled in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol. It is a bronze statue of the late Vel Phillips, who was the first woman and first African American on the Milwaukee Common Council. In statue form, Phillips sits up straight while wearing a slight smile.
Michael Phillips is Vel’s son and part of the task force that helped create the statue. He says one of the major barriers to the project was a Wisconsin law that prohibited any new statues on Capitol grounds. For the project to come to fruition, Michael needed bipartisan support.
"We had not one contrary voice to the idea of putting a sculpture of my mom up in the state capital," Phillips says. "I had buy-in across the aisle, and it's because she stepped across the aisle."
Vel Phillips was known for breaking barriers. She was the first African-American woman to graduate from the UW-Madison Law School in 1951, and she later became the first African-American woman to hold statewide office in the US when she was elected Wisconsin’s secretary of state in 1978.
Phillips was also a staunch advocate for civil rights and fair housing. During her time on the Common Council, she introduced a law that would outlaw housing discrimination. After leading protesters in the fair housing marches, the city council finally approved the law in 1968.
She was recognized this year with both a statue in Madison and a plaza in downtown Milwaukee. At the plaza opening, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson shared how Phillips’ leadership inspired the people around her.
"I had the opportunity to know Vel, to work with Vel, to serve with Vel on the Milwaukee Community Brainstorming Conference," Johnson says. "Let me tell you, Vel was a pistol in those meetings. She commanded attention. She had thoughts that she wanted to get across to the folks, and they happened because of Vel’s leadership."
The Vel Phillips task force—which advocated for this monument—was formed in 2020 and led by Michael Johnson, CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Dane County. The group was created to correct the lack of representation for people of color on the Wisconsin Capitol grounds–which already has statues of former state Prison Commissioner Hans Christian Heg and a Greek-goddess-like figure named Wisconsin.
Once the Vel Phillips statue was erected in July, it made national news as the first statue of a Black woman to be installed outside of a state capitol building.
"We had not one contrary voice to the idea of putting a sculpture of my mom up in the state capital. I had buy in across the aisle, and it's because she stepped across the aisle."Michael Phillips
Paul Farber is the director of Monument Lab, a nonprofit based in Philadelphia that conducted a national audit of monuments and statues. The audit revealed that only 6% of US monuments portray women, and only 10% commemorate Black or Indigenous individuals. Most monuments are related to conquest or war. Farber says the Vel Phillips monument is historic.
"You don't just get a monument kind of automatically," Farber says. "People have to fight for it. Your family, your friends, those who come after you. It's also a celebration of the constituencies who said here is a moment to highlight someone who may have been a monumental figure in their own communities. Now [they] can be seen registered and appreciated more broadly."
Seeing Vel celebrated by the greater Milwaukee community was touching for one of her close friends, Tiffany Koehler. She attended both ceremonies for the Vel Phillips Plaza and the monument at the Capitol.
"The first thing I notice by coming down here is the diversity of the community and the people that always rallied around Vel," Koehler says. "I just think that people that come out to celebrate her are pioneers in their own right, too, so I just look around and I see a reflection of her friends, her family, her community."
The Vel Phillips statue is a monumental step towards highlighting the local heroes who have shaped Milwaukee into what it is today. To paint a picture that is representative of Milwaukee’s culture and history, you don’t have to look much further than the people who live right here, in our own communities.
