Redesigned Monument Warps Sojourner Truth's Legacy, Scholars Say

CENTRAL PARK, NY — A group of scholars that accused a planned Central Park Women's Suffrage monument of whitewashing history is still concerned about the statue following an announcement that the monument would be redesigned to include Sojourner Truth.

More than two-dozen historical scholars representing institutions such as the Harlem Historical Society, Yale University and Barnard College sent a letter in August to the Monumental Women's Statue Fund advocating for a "transparent, inclusive, and carefully-considered" redesign of the statue following the announcement that Truth would be incorporated. The letter was never answered, and weeks later the redesign appeared on the agenda of a Sept. 16 meeting of the Public Design Commission.

"There was some hope when we wrote that letter that there would be community outreach to involve scholars, specifically because there was so much controversy about the original design," Todd Fine of the Washington Street Advocacy Group said.

The Public Design Commission had already approved a design featuring suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton when the Monumental Women's fund announced its redesign. Critics of the original statue claimed that depicting only Stanton and Anthony diminished the contributions of African-American women in the suffrage movement.

Since announcing the redesign, the statue fund has insisted that images of the new statue cannot be released because it's currently under review. Fine shared a message with Patch he received from the Public Design Commission that states there is no restriction placed on sharing a design while it's under review.

"I think it's sad that they are so anxious about public reaction that they are going to withhold the design until it's approved," Fine said.

Current concerns surrounding the statue are focused on its handling of Truth's legacy, according to the August letter sent to the statue fund. Sculptor Meredith Bergmann has described the design in statements as, "Sojourner Truth is speaking, Susan B. Anthony is bringing documentation of injustice, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton is poised to write," but historians say that although the three women agreed on women's suffrage, they held some widely different beliefs on issues such as whether black men should be allowed to vote.

"While Truth did stay at Stanton’s home for one week to attend the May 1867 meeting of the Equal Rights Association, there isn’t evidence that they planned or worked together there as a group of three. Additionally, even at that time, Stanton and Anthony’s overall rhetoric comparing black men’s suffrage to female suffrage treated black intelligence and capability in a manner that Truth opposed," the scholars' letter reads.

Airing these concerns is not meant to "antagonize" the statue's designers, but instead to help create a monument that will best honor the figures and history of the women's suffrage movement.

"There's no desire to antagonize them, criticize them, to attack them," Fine said. "It's just a desire among historians to make sure that probably the only memorial that New York City is going to get to Sojourner Truth and to black suffrage is done right."

The Public Design Commission's agenda for its Sept. 16 meeting said that the discussion of the monument should begin sometime around 11 a.m. The meeting will be held in the City Council chambers in City Hall, according to the meeting agenda.

The Monumental Women's Statue Fund announced in 2017 that a monument to the women's suffrage would be installed on The Mall in Central Park by August 2020, the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote. The statue will be the first new commemorative monument in Central Park since 1965 and the first in the park to memorialize a woman.

Funding for the statue is coming from both public and private sources, including a $500,000 grant from insurance company New York Life, $100,000 in funding from Borough President Gale Brewer's office and $35,000 in funding from City Council Member Helen Rosenthal.

A request for comment sent to the Monumental Women's Statue Fund was not returned.

You can read the scholars' full August 21 letter below: