Billie Holiday Monument (Pedestal)
Location: Pennsylvania Avenue & Lafayette Street – (Street View)
I finally made it over to the Billie Holiday Monument in Upton, but the statue was gone. The small plaza that usually contains the monument has been redone and a new pedestal has been installed, leaving me to speculate that Mrs. Holiday’s likeness will be returned soon. Maybe the memorial is being transformed into artist James Earl Reid’s original vision.
[Source]
Artist James Earl Reid began his commission to create a statue of the iconic singer in 1978 to fill the void left by the city’s demolition of the Royal Theatre. But what was unveiled at the dedication in 1985 wasn’t true to Reid’s original vision. He had conceived of it as not only a memorial to Holiday, but also to the themes of sadness and racial injustice so prevalent in her music. A set of reliefs depicting her songs “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child” were missing, as was a crow perched at the base of the sculpture, eating a bouquet of gardenias, representing the racism of the Jim Crow era. The statue was also meant to rest on a 5-foot-6 black granite pedestal but ended up sitting on a far less ceremonious concrete slab. The censorship and lackluster presentation of the Holiday monument have recently been reconsidered, and the statue is being restored with the original content. A rededication is currently in the works.
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