Justice Center. He didn’t do that out of the kindness of his heart. He was looking to gain political capital and notoriety. And being the county executive, he led the renaming for the legend that was my mom. He got some political distance out of that, no doubt. Even though they didn’t get along politically, my mom was someone who could actually reach across the aisle. She had grace, panache and naturally beautiful. She could speak well. And she had a good sense of humor. I reached out to him. He said that he would

be on board. Once we got the political piece of this figured out, I was a lot more optimistic.”

The Board created a subcommittee to do the legwork on considering the statue and to make a recommendation to the board. According to Phillips, many of the board members who were sympathetic to the statue volunteered to be on the subcommittee. While the statue taskforce had to make a convincing case, at least they would be speaking to a sympathetic jury.

There were several issues that needed to be ironed out and clarified.

“They recommended a policy exception and the placement outside rather than inside,” Phillips said. “We looked. We walked around the Capitol and they showed us every possible location indoors and outdoors. Of course, we wanted outdoors because we believed that outdoors was going to be generally more accessible to people who are coming to the Capitol grounds. We convinced them on every point that we had about this particular project. They didn’t need a lot because of course these are people who were supportive from the word ‘go.’ But we had to get it figured out how it could be built. ‘Where would it be? How big would it be? What would the base look like? How tall would it be?’ We had to figure out all of these things and pound it out with them. And God bless them. The devil is in the details and they understand that well.”

One of the main sticking points could have been how the artist would be selected. Since private funds would be used to build the statue, Phillips didn’t want to go through a lengthy RFP process. Instead Phillips wanted to get a group of well-informed arts people together, select the artist and then recommend a specific artist to the subcommittee.

“I asked a woman to join our taskforce,” Phillips said. “She was happy to do so and she collected what I call the A Team and they are absolutely great. I’ve learned so much about public art in the last 18 months to fill up my head. I lean on them a lot.  And strangely enough, I had settled on a public artist, a guy by the name of Radcliffe Bailey who worked in Milwaukee for a couple of years. The director of my A Team, Marilu Knode, has worked with Radcliffe. The piece that I really liked was in front of the BMO Harris Bank building in downtown Milwaukee. It’s a statue of WEB DuBois in the pose of Rodin’s The Thinker. I loved everything about it like the texture. I love the way he gestures. I got to talking with Marilu about it and told her why I liked it. She said that this Radcliffe Bailey is a perfect candidate for this project. He’s African American. He started from scratch. He’s an ‘outside’ artist. He didn’t go to art school or anything. But he has risen from poverty with his art and has become nationally famous. Radcliffe was part of a documentary that played at the Milwaukee Film Festival last year. Radcliffe’s wife’s grandfather is Gordon Parks. He’s very invested in African American public art. I sent him the documentary about my mom. He watched it and got on board. I kind of introduced Radcliffe to my artist team. They liked him.”

However, they couldn’t just go to a state subcommittee and say, “Try Radcliffe, you’ll like him.”

“I had to give the subcommittee a collection and this is how we chose among these seven artists who would be good for this project,” Phillips recalled. “And so we went through a process. They liked Radcliffe. I did too. We convinced the subcommittee on Radcliffe. Those were the two hurdles that we had. The policy position on the statues, we dealt with that. And we convinced them that the curated process is better than the RFP process. Everything after that was nuts and bolts. The committee finally gave it the go ahead and they wrote a recommendation to the greater committee.”

On November 1, the State Capitol and Executive Residence Board voted on the subcommittee’s recommendation. It was approved unanimously.

“It’s amazing,” Johnson reflected. “She will be the first Black woman in the state of Wisconsin to have a statue. There is a statue of Rosa Parks in the U.S. Capitol. There is a statue of some Black slaves at the Virginia State Capitol. But there is not one single statue that stands alone of a Black woman at any capitol in the United States. It feels good to know that I am a part of that story and helped to champion that. It’s a real honor. I cried when they took the vote. I cried. Someone from the office took a picture as they took the vote. They took a picture of me. I haven’t shared it with anybody. I’m so used to fighting for things. And I was, on some levels, surprised because I am used to fighting hard and battling to get things done. And we didn’t have that battle this time around.”

For the sake of ushering the proposal before the board, the taskforce had created a design concept of what the statue could look like — Radcliffe had not been commission or officially selected yet — to assist the board in better conceptualizing the project.

“The design is a concept that was created, so we haven’t started the design yet,” Johnson said. “The statue may look like that and it may not. It might be different. That was the replica that we used to get it approved. It could look like that, but it may not. It might be different features. It may be a different pose. We don’t know. It will be consistent with the size of the other statues. We’re going to keep the dimensions and a similar kind of style as the other two statues.”

The statue will place near the southwest walkway to the State Capitol grounds where Main St., Hamilton St., and Carroll St. meet.

Now that the statue has approval, the artist selected and the funds for the erection of the statue raised, part two of the project commences, the creation of a $1 million endowment fund that would fund projects that would keep Vel Phillips’ legacy alive for future generations, so that one day, people won’t walk by her statue and wonder who that is. The taskforce with the guidance of Vel Phillips’ family will raise the funds and decide how they would be used.

Mike Phillips already has a wish list.

“My first recommendation was the things that are in my mom’s name already,” Phillips said. “My mother and my father have a scholarship administered by the Wisconsin African American Lawyers called the Vel & Dale Scholarship. And the scholarship of $5,000 a piece goes to a first-year student at the UW-Madison Law School and a first-year student at the Marquette Law School. What I want to do is expand that scholarship so that it is $5,000 every year for the tenure of the law school they are in. That would up the amount to $15,000 per scholarship. Also I sit on a committee with Milele Coggs who is an alderperson on the Milwaukee Common Council. She actually represents my mother’s aldermanic district. Milele and I along with other community members choose a Vel Phillips Trailblazer Award winner each year. That person gets a plaque. But as my mom used to say, ‘What are they going to do with a plaque? If you are giving an award,  let’s have some sort of stipend that goes along with it because these are people who typically are working really hard spending money out of their own pockets often times doing the good work they do in the city.’ I worked for teachers for years. I was a lawyer at WEAC representing educators who often went into their own pockets to get school supplies for their students because schools are often underfunded. Teachers are the kind of people who would say, ‘I don’t know how we are going to get money, but if I have to, I’ll pay for the reams of paper myself.’ These are the kind of folks who win the Vel Phillips Trailblazer Award and I want to give them some money in addition to a plaque.”

The ways to honor Vel Phillips’ legacy are as many as the way that she touched the lives of the people of Wisconsin and beyond.