During the 2020 protests and Confederate statue removals, conversations about monuments and representation intensified across New York City. A two-year research project visited and documented 30 monuments honoring Black Americans throughout the city. Photographs and essays accompany each entry, revealing who is honored, how each statue was commissioned, and the community campaigns behind them. Examples include Ralph Ellison’s Harlem statue, dedicated to Invisible Man after a neighbor’s campaign. Monuments shape public perception and self-identity, expose gaps in recognition—particularly for Black women—and reflect the role of activism and local communities in memorialization.
In 2020, during the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter, the murder of George Floyd and a surge of Confederate statue removals, discussions about monuments became frequent in teacher David Felsen's New York City high school history class. The discussions struck up a series of questions-like who was the first Black American to have a monument in NYC, the total number of Black monuments in the city, or how many Black women have statues dedicated to them.
"I couldn't find easy answers to my questions," he said. "I started thinking more and more about how Black Americans are represented, how they are represented nationwide, but specifically here in New York City." So he set out to find more answers, and, over the course of two years, he visited and did extensive research on 30 monuments to Black Americans throughout the city. His new book, New York City Monuments of Black Americans: A History and Guide, is a result of this work.
Photographs and essays tell the story of each person honored, along with how the statue came to be. For example, Ralph Ellison is honored not only in Harlem's Ralph Ellison Plaza, but a statue that resides there is also dedicated to Ellison's novel Invisible Man. After his death, his Beaumont neighbor, Anne Dobson, launched a campaign to get the statue made.
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