Ivy Tech honors Lucy Higgs Nichols with sculpture

Nov. 2—SELLERSBURG — Ivy Tech dedicated a sculpture by William M. Duffy to Lucy Higgs Nichols on Thursday to honor her legacy and her perseverance for freedom.

Nichols was born April 10, 1838. She was enslaved by the Higgs Family that lived near Bolivar, Tennessee. She gained her freedom in 1862 by escaping to the 23rd Regiment, Indiana Volunteers camped nearby.

She worked as a nurse for the soldiers as they fought in many major battles of the Civil War. She mustered out with them in Louisville in 1865. Nichols came to New Albany with returning veterans of 23rd Regiment.

She married John Nichols in 1870. Nichols applied for a pension after Congress passed the 1892 act for Civil War nurses and was denied. In 1895, Nichols and 55 veterans of the 23rd petitioned Congress. In 1898, a Special Act of Congress awarded her pension. Nichols was an honorary member of the Grand Arm of the Republic. She died in 1915.

"(The sculpture) is not a portrait of her, it is a symbol of what she stood for," Duffy said.

Duffy is an artist from Louisville. He went to the Louisville School of Art to pursue drawing and painting. He later picked up an interest in sculpting after witnessing a car accident that left a bank's marble columns in ruins.

He took a piece of stone home and started carving into it with a hammer and screwdriver. From there he found his new passion.

A friend of his who had connections to Ivy Tech told Duffy that the school was looking for piece to commemorate Lucy Higgs Nichols. After doing some research into her, he knew exactly what piece would fit her.

"The piece that you see now is actually a marble carving that I did sometime ago," Duffy said. "I had the piece enlarged to the size that you see. I needed something that showed her strength that wasn't completely abstract."

Ivy Tech wanted a piece that told the story of Lucy Higgs Nichols and showed the importance she has in the Southern Indiana Community with her role in the Civil War and the Underground Railroad.

"The story of Lucy herself talks about the perseverance and the grit, that's what we focus with our students on a daily basis," said Travis Haire, Ivy Tech's chancellor. "It includes to the diversity and equity and the belonging. Our tagline is 'You belong here,' but it's a lot more than a tagline. We really mean it and we want our students to feel welcomed."

With this piece, it also addressed Duffy's view on Confederate statues and art pieces being torn down and destroyed. He thinks those pieces should be removed and put in a privately owned place like a museum for those to learn about the history.

If these pieces of history are being destroyed, it becomes a myth and the myth will not tell the story, Duffy said.

"Now it's time for the African Americans to tell their story and tell in their own way, the way they view things," he said. "In the far future it's like now we have both sides of the story. Now we can explain it better, we can line things up to say this is wrong and this is right. If you're only working with one side, you're only going to get that person's side of the story."