Last weekend–on International Women’s Day, no less–I made my way into Boston to take a look at the Boston Women’s Memorial, a set of three statues on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phillis Wheatley are the subjects, three Massachusetts women who were also influential writers. The three are at street level, having stepped off of their pedestals, using those pedestals as writing desks (Wheatley and Stone) or for support (Adams).
In an uncanny bit of good timing, I was able to get my hands on a new book called Where Are the Women? The Girl Scouts’ Campaign for the First Statue of Women in Central Park by Janice Hechter (Red Chair Press Books for Young Readers) that details the seven-year campaign that the New York City Girl Scouts and a group called Monumental Women waged to get statues of real women (as opposed to, say, Alice in Wonderland) in Central Park. In 2020, a statue of Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was unveiled in the park, created by Meredith Bergmann, the same sculptor who made the Boston Women’s Memorial.
Lucy Stone
Phillis Wheatley
As with the Central Park story, the Boston Women’s Memorial took over a decade to bring to fruition, from the first discussions in 1992 to the unveiling on October 25, 2003. Before this memorial, the Commonwealth Avenue Mall had the same number of statues of real women as Central Park did: zero. There was some criticism at the time of its opening that three women were grouped together instead of having individual statues like the men do. While I understand this, I really like the memorial as it is. I felt like it led me to contemplate the connections between the women. The choice of these three seemed a little random to me at first, but as I read the quotations that are engraved on each of their pedestals, I saw their common quests for equality and justice, not only for women, but for all people.
If you’d like to learn more about these women, look for the new book One Girl’s Voice: How Lucy Stone Helped Change the Law of the Land, as well as Leave It to Abigail! The Revolutionary Life of Abigail Adams by Barb Rosenstock (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2020). I wish I knew of a good book about Phillis Wheatley, but the ones I found about her are mostly older and from educational publishers, not trade. I did find one middle grade historical fiction book that looks interesting: My Name Is Phillis Wheatley by Afua Cooper (Kids Can Press, 2023), in which Wheatley narrates her own story.
Abigail Adams
If this memorial inspires you to seek out more women’s history in Boston, check out the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail website, which is not just one trail, but an organization with a number of tours all around Boston. The Women’s Memorial is part of the Ladies Walk, which I guess is a nod to Abigail Adams’s exhortation to her husband to “remember the ladies.” For the twentieth anniversary of the memorial, in 2023, this organization recorded three contemporary women reading excerpts from each of the women in the memorial: Mayor Michelle Wu read Lucy Stone’s, Attorney General Andrea Campbell read Abigail Adams’s, and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley recorded Phillis Wheatley’s. There’s a QR code on Stone’s statue that allows you to hear them.