A bust of famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass was unveiled in the Massachusetts Senate Chamber on Wednesday, the first bust of an African American to be permanently added to the Massachusetts Statehouse.
It’s also the first bust to be added to the Senate Chamber in more than 125 years.
Senate President Karen Spilka emphasized the ties that Douglass — who lived for a time in the state and delivered speeches in the Senate chamber and at Boston’s Faneuil Hall — had to Massachusetts.
“Though he was not born here, in Massachusetts we like to call Frederick Douglass one of our own,” she said. “He came to our state after escaping enslavement. This is where he wanted to come.”
Douglass also first heard news of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation while in Boston, she said.
With the bust, Douglass takes his place as a founding father in the chamber and offers some balance in a Statehouse which honors people who are predominantly white, leaving out the stories of countless people of color, Spilka said.