CHICAGO (AP) — An online fundraising effort is underway to build a statue of Ida B. Wells on Chicago’s South Side.
The Ida B. Wells Commemorative Art Committee says the crowdfunding campaign aims to raise $100,000 of the $300,000 needed for a monument of the civil rights pioneer during October. It’s on the website IndieGoGo. Wells was a journalist and suffragist. She was known as a Rosa Parks-like figure during her era. She died in Chicago in 1931.
Sculptor Richard Hunt would make the piece and it would be located in a grassy area near where Wells once lived. It is the same area where a Chicago Housing Authority development once stood that was named after Wells.
The committee says when the statue is complete it will be donated to the City of Chicago’s Public Art Collection.
