5/26/2019
Monumental women: Breaking the bronze ceiling
Breaking Newstags: statues, monuments, Womens Suffrage, Susan B Anthony
If you are among the millions of visitors to New York City's Central Park each year, you've seen the statues that dot the landscape honoring Shakespeare, Alexander Hamilton and Christopher Columbus. So, who's missing?
"How can you have statues of men everywhere, and the only statues of women are Mother Goose, Alice in Wonderland?" said Coline Jenkins. "We needed realwomen."
In the park there are 22 statues of men … and one dog, Balto, who was – you guessed it – male.
"The women who have played such a vital part of history are invisible, until now," said Pam Elam. She and Jenkins run the Monumental Women campaign. Their goal: to erect a monument in Central Park honoring women's suffrage pioneers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Their efforts haven't exactly been a walk in the park. "They said immediately, 'No, there will be no new statues in Central Park. It's a historical collection, no,'" said Elam. "We persisted. Then they said, 'Well, can you pick another park? And do you really want a statue? How 'bout a nice garden?' We persisted."
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