In Upper Manhattan, amidst the lively green foliage of Riverside Park, the whizing cars of the West Side Highway and the buzzing of bustling Harlem apartments, a 15-foot high bronze shows the hollow overview of a man in the middle of the strand with one cracked hand. A quote from Ralph Ellison’s pioneering 1952 novel Is etched in the surface of a low -light granite panel: “I am an invisible man … I am invisible, understand it, simply because people refuse to see me.”
The memorial In honor of the writer born in Oklahoma, who lived on the other side of 730 Riverside Drive, was made by the black revolutionary artist Elizabeth Catlett, who spent her six decade career on the lives and experiences of black and Mexican women through paintings, sculptures and prints. Her only public art committee in New York, “Invisible Man: A Memorial to Ralph Ellison”, unveiled in 2003, remains one of the few monuments in the city in honor of a black American who was also created by a black artist. (Just over 2% of the 800 public public monuments of the city were Made by black artists.)
The work is one of the 30 public sculptures and bass reliefs in the recently published book New York City Monuments of Black Americans (2025) by David FELSEN.
Right: Gabriel Koren and Algernon Miller, “Frederick Douglass Memorial” (2011)
A high school teacher in the Chelsea district in Manhattan, Felsen said Hyperallergic That he started investigating the representation of black Americans in the public memorials of the city in the midst of the national removal of confederated monuments fueled by Black Lives Matter protests and the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
‘[My classes]Always use monuments as examples of works of art that tell us a lot about a society at a certain moment – what we appreciate, who we appreciate – and then also how that changes, “Felsen said.
When he started to delve into the landscape of public artworks of the city, he noted that context for images of black historical figures was ‘not immediately clear’.
“I felt that there was a need for this kind of information,” Felsen said.
Although there are hundreds of plaquettes, markers, abstract sculptures and living memorials in honor of black Americans in the city, Felsen’s Guide focuses specifically on public visual representations of black people. Chronologically organized, it starts with the first appearance of a black American in a New York City monument: a nameless, previously slaved black man in a bronze bass-relief panel in the Civil War Soldiers’ Monument (1869) at the cemetery of Groene Houten.
Like all memorials with black individuals in the next seven decades (such as one of the sculptural figures in the soldiers and sailors Memorial Arch in Grand Army Plaza), the man in the green wooden monument is a symbolic representation of a character instead of the similarity of a real person.
The first monument to be a tribute to a real black person arrived in 1946 with the bust of Richmond Barthé van Author and educator Booker T. WashingtonLocated in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in Bronx Community College. The unveiling of this work and others that followed, such as images that are honor George Washington Carver” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.And Duke Ellingtoncoincided with the rise of black American residents in New York City during the Great migration of the early 20th century And an increase in black political representation.
Despite this progress when the gap in racial representation, there is a stunning absence of black American women in the monuments of the city. New York has long been struggling with a striking under-representation of non-men in his public memorial memorial that initiatives as she has built NYC have only recently started. Abolitionist and activist Sojourner Truth can be seen in the Pioneers Monument for Women’s Rights in Central Park, although she was initially excluded in the original proposal, and a long -awaited tribute to Staatsconges Shirley Chishholm is currently underway, Hindered by pandemic delays.
This lack of representation in particular has led to frustrated activists in honor of Trans Rights lawyer Marsha P. Johnson opposite the Stonewall Inn in 2021.
“Monuments always matter,” said Felsen. “Who we choose to honor is a representation of what we care about and who we give.”
He added that the importance of this public tribute is particularly striking at the present moment, because the Trump government continues to launder history while flooding art and the humanities.
“At this specific moment, because the president is essentially trying to erase black history and because the Ministry of Defense has decided that they should no longer celebrate the Black History Month, the preservation of black history, where it happens, is especially important,” concluded Felsen.
