Here & Now

Calls for a Statue of Vel Phillips at the State Capitol

Frederica Freyberg:

In a sign of an idea whose time has come this week, there are calls to honor one of Wisconsin’s best-known civil rights pioneers. This idea comes just weeks after protesters toppled a replica of the iconic “Forward” statute and another of Colonel Hans Christian Heg, a Norwegian immigrant from Wisconsin who died fighting for the Union army in the Civil War. The proposed statute at the Capitol would honor African-American trailblazer Vel Phillips. She died two years ago at the age of 94 after breaking race barriers her entire life. Phillips was the first black woman elected as Wisconsin’s secretary of state, the first in the nation elected to statewide office, the first black woman to graduate from the UW Law School and the first black person elected to Milwaukee’s City Council and to be a Wisconsin judge. To learn more about Vel Phillips, go to PBSwisconsin.org and watch the 2015 documentary “Vel Phillips: Dream Big Dreams.”