'Representation is powerful': Bust of Frederick Douglass unveiled in Statehouse

BOSTON ― His words rang through the Massachusetts Senate chamber in 1894 and then graced one of its walls, where they were etched permanently in place and in memory.

On Wednesday, lawmakers installed a sculpture of American writer, orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass in a place of honor, a niche adjacent to the quote taken from that long-ago speech: "Truth, justice, liberty and humanity will ultimately prevail."

The sculpture of Douglass — who lived part of his life in New Bedford and Lynn after escaping slavery in Maryland — is the first bust depicting a person of color in a permanent place in the Statehouse and the first added to the Senate chamber in more than 125 years.

"Today, Frederick Douglass takes his long-overdue place among our nation's founding fathers in the Senate chamber, where he will inspire generations of Massachusetts lawmakers to lead as he did, with truth, justice, liberty and humanity," said Senate President Karen E. Spilka, D-Ashland, who spearheaded the drive to diversify the figures represented in the Statehouse, according to the press release announcing the event.

"He was not born in Massachusetts, but we like to call him one of our own," Spilka said in her remarks from the Senate podium. "He delivered speeches in Faneuil Hall, in the House and Senate chambers. He heard the news of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation not 400 yards from here, down the street at Trinity Temple."

His fight against injustice "stamped the state and the country; he left an indelible mark on the commonwealth and the nation," Spilka said.

She pointed to the busts of Washington, Lincoln and Franklin displayed in the chamber and remarked that Douglass now takes his rightful place as a "founding father" of the country.

"Representation is powerful," Spilka said. She spearheaded the effort to include more people of color on the walls of the Statehouse. "We must be intentional in who we lift up, who speaks from the walls of the Senate chamber and the Statehouse."

Subjects chosen to adorn the Statehouse walls are elevated for their elected, military or civic service. Douglass fits in the latter category, according to Susan Greendyke Lachevre, the art collections manager for the Massachusetts Art Commission.

"This is a wonderful way to honor him and to showcase his countless and important contributions to the formation of Massachusetts," she said.

The bust depicts an older version of the legendary abolitionist and is molded from another sculpture created by Lloyd Lillie, a famed Boston-based artist who also sculpted likenesses of John Adams, Abigail and John Quincy Adams and Booker T. Washington.

Lillie died in 2020.

A different bust of Douglass, on loan from the Museum of African American History of Boston and Nantucket, was on display in the chamber prior to its $22 million-plus renovation, which was completed in 2019.

The unveiling coincided with both Black History Month and the day ascribed to Douglass' birth. In addition to his fame as an abolitionist, Douglass was also a champion for women's rights.

"It is fitting," said Noelle Trent, the president and CEO of the museum, "that his bust was unveiled in a city that is headed by a woman mayor, in a state led by a woman governor and lieutenant governor, and by a woman who is the president of the Senate."

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Bust of Frederick Douglass unveiled in Massachusetts Statehouse