Glover monument effort moving forward slowly

Joshua Glover

After more than a year of preparation, the Joshua Glover Sesquicentennial Commemoration Committee has publicly announced its design competition for a monument in Milwaukee’s Cathedral Square. The monument will honor runaway slave Joshua Glover and the people of Wisconsin who helped to free him. The committee will invite between 100 and 200 artists to submit entries and expects that the process of selecting a winner will take six months.

The artists will vie for an opportunity to bring to life a critical six-year period in Wisconsin history that began in 1854. On March 10 of that year, Glover was captured at his Racine home by federal marshals and his owner, Bennami Garland, who had traveled from Missouri to track Glover. The group beat Glover and incarcerated him in the Milwaukee jail. The following day, Sherman Booth, a newspaper publisher, learned of the capture and organized a mob of 5,000 people who stormed Cathedral Square, breaking down the jailhouse door and freeing Glover. Once freed, he was spirited away to Canada, where historians have discovered that he lived a long life as a free man.

"The Glover Rescue" by Clarence Boyce Monegar

Booth, meanwhile, was quickly arrested for aiding and abetting Glover’s escape and a six-year struggle between the state and federal courts over jurisdiction ensued. The court case involving Booth unfolded in both the state and federal courts between 1854 and 1860. In 1855, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional and ordered Booth – who had been found guilty in the federal district court – freed. The U.S. Supreme Court soon ordered the state court to uphold the federal law, but the state court, in 1860, refused to file that mandate. To this day, it has not been filed.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is believed to have been the only court of last resort in the nation to have officially declared the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional. That moment in the state’s history has been marked in a number of ways – with an original play and documentary developed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court; with a book drafted by historians Ruby West Jackson and Walter MacDonald; and with a plaque in Milwaukee’s Cathedral Square.

Justice Louis B. Butler Jr., who spoke at the press conference announcing the design competition during the July NAACP National Convention in Milwaukee, said the Glover story “tells the true character of the people of that time.” He said it is significant to note that the Wisconsin Supreme Court at the time knew it was required to follow precedent and interpret law, but also knew it had to do justice.

“It is one of Wisconsin’s shining moments,” Butler said. He particularly enjoys retelling how, in 1854, the Racine sheriff issued a warrant for the arrest of Glover’s master and the federal officers who captured Glover on charges of assault and battery.

The goal of the monument is not only to memorialize a piece of history, but also to celebrate its national significance. “It is a Wisconsin tradition that needs to be emulated,” said George Gonis, a museum exhibit designer who is organizing the competition. “We would be negligent if we didn’t tell the story as it should be told.”

Contact Gonis at (414) 444-9911 or joshuaglover@miad.edu with questions or comments about the Joshua Glover monument competition. To order a copy of the Glover documentary, contact Wisconsin Public Television at (608) 263-4575. For a copy of the Glover script – free for educational purposes – contact Amanda K. Todd at (608) 264-6256 or Amanda.todd@wicourts.gov.

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