Sculptor says Helen Keller statue at Alabama State Capitol nearing casting

Helen Keller, a writer, educator and advocate for the disabled, holds a Braille volume in a library surrounded by shelves containing books and decorative figurines in a 1956 portrait. A childhood illness left Keller, a native of Tuscumbia, blind and deaf. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The sculptor of a Helen Keller statue headed to the Alabama State Capitol said Tuesday the sculpture would be ready for bronze casting in “probably one more month.”

Jay Warren, an Oregon-based sculptor designing the state of the disability rights activist, shared photos of the statue with the Alabama Women’s Tribute Statue Commission over a Zoom call.

“I want to work on her face some more and get the likeness better,” he said. “Detail everything, smooth out some stuff.”

The commission is overseeing the installation of statues of Keller and civil rights activist Rosa Parks on the grounds of the Capitol. The two monuments would be the first on the Capitol grounds to depict Alabama women.

Keller, a Tuscumbia native who lost her vision and hearing from an illness contracted before her second birthday, became an author and an advocate for the rights of the disabled. Montgomery police arrested Parks, a longtime activist, on Dec. 1, 1955 after she refused to surrender her seat to a white man on a segregated bus. The arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, viewed as the start of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

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Both statues will have plaques attached, and the wording on both plaques was a focus of the meeting on Tuesday. Keller’s monument will have quotes from Keller written in Braille. Warren asked for the commission’s help in proofreading the Braille quotes.

“I want to make sure it’s perfect before it goes to bronze,” he said.

Members of the commission also reviewed suggested language for a plaque attached to the statue of Parks. Commission members and Julia Knight, a Georgia-based sculptor who designed the statue, all agreed that the plaque should break from concept of Parks as refusing to give up her seat due to fatigue and instead reflect her long lifetime of activist work.

“This statue, from my perspective, is meant to break the stereotypical concept of her and bring her more into the fullness of her personhood (and) all the aspects of her personhood,” she said.

The commission looked at four proposals, developed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH). All four reference Parks’ work investigating and protesting crimes against women. As a member of the Montgomery NAACP, Parks investigated the rape of Recy Taylor, a Black woman, by six white men in 1944.

The proposals also say Parks “refused to comply” with the city’s bus segregation law. Steve Murray, the director of the ADAH, said the goal was “to speak directly and clearly about what her action was accomplishing that day and what she was doing, and moving beyond the trope that she was a tired seamstress.”

Rev. Agnes Lover, a member of the commission, said she preferred a plaque that would also include Parks’ full name (Rosa McAuley Parks); the specific dates of her birth and death, instead of only the years, and a mention that she was born in Tuskegee.

“I thought that was very important, to show how she is native to Alabama,” she said.

The commission did not make a final selection on the plaque language Tuesday.

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