The yearslong push to place a statue of former Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young inside the U.S. Capitol is closing in on its finish line, with major local funders stepping up and a public event scheduled for Tuesday to mark the progress. Khary Turner, executive director of the Coleman A. Young Foundation, said the fundraising effort is close to completion, with the statue estimated to cost about $1 million.
As reported by Axios, the Coleman A. Young Foundation has landed a roster of prominent backers for the initiative, including Suzanne Shank, the Ilitch family, Dan Gilbert's Bedrock, the DTE Foundation and John A. James. The Coleman A. Young Statue Commission has separately described the campaign as an effort to raise $2 million to support the statue's creation and placement, with commission members including Chris Ilitch, John James, Suzanne Shank, Wendy L. Jackson, Marvin Beatty and Adam Hollier.
Young served as Detroit's first African-American mayor and its longest-serving, holding office for two decades starting in 1974, according to Axios. He died in 1997. The foundation credits him with integrating the police department, driving development in Detroit and creating unprecedented opportunity for Black employees and businesses, per the foundation's own account relayed by Axios.
A Capitol Replacement Decades in the Making
The statue would replace Michigan's existing marble likeness of Lewis Cass, a territorial governor who supported slavery, according to Axios. Michigan's other statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection depicts former President Gerald Ford, an honor the state offered in 2011, according to Michigan Advance. The collection as a whole includes 100 historical figures sent by U.S. states, per Axios.
The swap traces back to December 2022, when the Michigan Legislature adopted a resolution to place a statue of Coleman Alexander Young in Statuary Hall, according to the Coleman A. Young Statue Commission. That followed a Senate resolution requesting the replacement, which the Michigan Senate adopted on June 30, 2022, Michigan Advance reported. The outlet also noted that under rules in place since 1864, each state may provide two statues of notable citizens for the collection. At the time, MLive reported that Young would be the first Black man to be featured in the collection at Statuary Hall — a characterization that differs from the Coleman A. Young Statue Commission's own description of Young as only the second African-American man honored there, after Frederick Douglass. The two accounts were not reconciled in available records.
Federal rules allow such swaps: under legislation enacted in 2000, a state may ask the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress to approve replacing a statue it has previously provided for Statuary Hall, according to the Architect of the Capitol.
Local Costs Already Moving Through Wayne County
The fundraising isn't happening in a vacuum. Wayne County's Ways and Means committee has already voted to approve a reimbursable county contract covering phase one of the project, according to a report from CitizenPortal.ai. That outlet reported phase-one costs are expected to run just north of $1 million, covering transportation, marketing and related implementation work tied to getting the statue to Washington.
The Coleman A. Young Foundation itself has a longer track record in Detroit beyond the statue push. Established in 1982, the 501(c)(3) has provided more than 450 college scholarships to students from Detroit schools, according to the foundation. Its REAL Skills program has helped more than 3,000 young people ages 11 to 18, along with their parents, prepare for college and life, the foundation says. Wayne State University has also built academic programming around Young's legacy, launching a three-credit course and guest lecture series titled Planning and Social Legacies of Coleman A. Young, according to Wayne State University.
Event Set for Tuesday, Unveiling Eyed for Late 2027
Detroit plans to celebrate the campaign's progress at an event Tuesday at the Wright Museum of African American History, which will also invite the public to help complete the fundraising and seek support for the foundation's scholarship and job-development work, per Axios. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield are scheduled to speak, and sculptor Austen Brantley is set to appear as the artist commissioned for the piece. Turner said all living Detroit mayors are slated to attend. The Coleman A. Young Foundation will stream the announcement on its Facebook page at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Turner said the statue is expected to be unveiled as soon as late 2027, according to Axios. The scale of the Detroit campaign echoes a similar statue effort in Florida: the Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Fund raised about $800,000 in private donations over roughly four years, drawing nearly 500 donors before her statue replaced a Confederate general's likeness in Statuary Hall in July 2022, according to NPR. Once complete, Young's statue would join the National Statuary Hall Collection inside the U.S. Capitol, per Axios.
