County leaders celebrate completion of Trailblazing Women of WNY monument project at Old County Hall

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A trio of Western New York women are now forever immortalized in front of Old County Hall in Downtown Buffalo.

A number of local officials joined the Trailblazing Women of WNY on Monday to formally commemorate the monuments of Mary Burnett Talbert, Louise Blanchard Bethune and Geraldine "Gawö:Sid-tah" Green, and recognize their contribution to the growth of the community.

Karen King, Commissioner of Public Advocacy and executive director of the Erie County Commission on the Status of Women, says this process was formalized back in 2018.

"I approached the county executive with this idea, assuming that we would have to come up with all the funding, and he said, 'Well, how much do you think it's going to cost?' And he's been an avid supporter ever since," said King following Monday's celebration ceremony outside Old County Hall. "We started the fundraising in an awareness campaign, and identifying all three of the women forming our committee, doing community outreach back in 2018. Of course, with COVID, we did get sidelined for a bit, and then, of course, got back on track after COVID, after we pivoted into a post-COVID era, and we have been going full steam ahead."

With the help of artist and sculptor Jiwoong Cheh, King says this was a public project with contributions from a number of different people along the way.

"You don't just put a statue down. You've got to find the right space, as we went through that journey, because it was originally in another location. And then you have to develop your infrastructure, so you have to work with engineers and designers," King detailed. "The whole process of creating the statues, of course, takes time, so here we are in 2024."

King says the monuments of Talbert, Bethune and Sid-tah were chosen through community outreach.

"We asked community members to send us recommendations, but we also wanted to make sure that we were being representative of the community. We want to ensure that a Native American, indigenous woman was going to be represented. We wanted to ensure that an African American Black woman was going to be represented. It was very important to us," King noted. "There's a big movement going on across the country with representation of women, but representation matters. So it was a very thoughtful process, where we engaged a wide variety of community members. From museum curators, historians, teachers and community advocates."

While King is not sure about whether or not there will be more similar statues honoring the women pioneers of the Western New York community, she says there is going to be a plaque program as part of the next phase of this initiative. There will also be a Living Trailblazing Women narrative series that will be launched at the Buffalo History Museum later on this year.

"There was no controversy with the three choices of the women for this site. We will look at others in the future, but you'd be surprised that if you start recommending one individual, than others will want more," added Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz on Monday. "We were able to, as commissioner King noted, in a very short period of time back in 2018 and '19, come up with the three women to honor. This would have happened sooner, if not for COVID, but I'm very proud that we've reached this day. I'm very proud that the county was the primary funder of this, we were the ones that ensured that this project would move along."

Poloncarz adds these monuments don't just honor the past, but will hopefully inspire others in the future.

"If you were a young man, a boy like I was, you saw a lot of male monuments. You didn't see any female monuments. And the ones that did exist in this community were more representations like the Spirit of [Womanhood] along the Scajaquada in Buffalo, which doesn't honor any one woman in particular. So I think it was important to do this," Poloncarz said. "It sends a message to young girls and women in our community that you do matter. We see that discussion going on right now in our national discourse. But I'm very proud that Erie County was one of the first communities in the nation to actually invest in these monuments."