The group working to place a statue of Coleman Young at the U.S. Capitol announced Tuesday that an identical bronze likeness of Detroit's first Black mayor will be erected in Detroit.
Highlighting a celebration at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Coleman A. Young Statue Initiative also said it has raised $1.2 million, enough to pay for the sculptures − but is continuing to fundraise to cover the considerable associated costs, with hopes of also raising enough to boost a pair of youth initiatives.
The overall budget of perhaps $2 million is “kind of a moving target,” Coleman A. Young Foundation chair Marvin Beatty told the Free Press last week, with prices rising and with a long list of steps before Young can stand
in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, DC.
Additional expenses include the design and construction of pedestals, transportation, and the removal and new placement for the statue Young will replace.
The installation date is also uncertain, Beatty said, though the hope is for late 2027 or early 2028. “We might actually have to get in line,” he said, behind other states taking advantage of a 2000 federal law permitting statues in the gallery to be replaced.
Detroit-born artist Austen Brantley has been commissioned to create the statues. He displayed a 26-inch-tall bronze model of the potential finished product Tuesday evening at the Wright.
Civic, business and government leaders there were told that as planned, the five-term mayor would become the first person in history to have identical artworks mounted in the statuary hall and the honoree's home state.
The Capitol collection includes two historical figures from each state. The Michigan Legislature voted unanimously in 2022 to send Young to Washington, DC, and recall Lewis Cass, a senator, ambassador, cabinet secretary and unsuccessful candidate for president who was also a slaveholder and the architect of the Trail of Tears.
"States are recognizing that who they send says a lot about them," former Michigan state senator Adam Hollier had told the Free Press.
Hollier, who shepherded the resolution to honor Young through the Legislature, said there was "no person over the last century who played a more significant role in what our state looks like than Mayor Young."
Hollier is part of the Michigan Statuary Hall Commission, the official state oversight body for the statue initiative. Others on the commission are Christopher Ilitch, CEO of Ilitch Companies; Wendy L. Jackson, managing director of the Detroit Program at the Kresge Foundation; John A. James, father of gubernatorial candidate John James and chairman of James Group International; and Suzanne Shank, co-founder and CEO of Siebert Williams Shank & Co.
Among the project's donors to date are Wayne County, Bedrock, Kresge, the DTE Foundation and the Knight Foundation.
Beatty, a deputy fire commissioner during Young's tenure as mayor, said the hope is to not only raise enough to erect the statues, but to support the Young Foundation's scholarship and other college programming and also a new program. “REAL Skills: The Long Game” is designed to expand youth opportunity through financial literacy and skilled trades development programs.
Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Coleman Young statue at U.S. Capitol will have a twin in Detroit
