Wichita park honoring civil rights leader is up for people’s choice award. How to vote
Wichita may gain international accolades for the first government-funded artwork that shows an African American in downtown.
CODAworx, an international arts organization based in Wisconsin, selected the Chester I. Lewis Reflection Square Park as one of the top 100 successful projects integrating art into the community.
Those projects are open for people’s choice voting. On Thursday, the Chester I. Lewis Reflection Square Park had around 400 votes, putting it in sixth place behind works such as the Anti-Soviet Partisans’ Memorial in Poland, which had 3,800 votes.
“We’re in great company,” said Matthew Mazzotta, one of the project’s artists. “I’m glad people are voting because other projects aren’t getting the votes that we’re getting, so it’s exciting.”
Unveiled in September 2023, the urban park honors Wichita-based civil rights attorney Chester I. Lewis, Jr., an influential civil rights attorney and leader.
Lewis was a local civil rights leader who served on the legal team that argued the landmark 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He also worked with Wichita’s NAACP Youth Council during student sit-ins at the Dockum Drugs Store lunch counter in 1958. It was the first successful student-led sit-in of the civil rights movement, leading the drug store chain to desegregate all of its Kansas lunch counters 19 months before the better known Woolworth’s sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina.
CODAworx builds its platform on connecting artists to industry collaborators. In Wichita’s case, the city and the Department of Parks and Recreation commissioned two artists to create the artwork tribute to Lewis.
Ellamonique Baccus, a Wichita-based artist and art therapist, used her skills in drawing, painting and glass to create parts of the park’s artwork. Baccus said since the project’s completion, it’s been a catalyst for conversation about improving the country.
“It’s the first time that, you know, taxpayer dollars, city funding has been used to depict the African-American perspective,” Baccus said. “And that feels so different, right? It’s like when you see somebody that looks like you, you feel like ‘Oh, it’s okay for me to be here.’”
Mazzotta said the work’s impact doesn’t stop at the city level.
“This work is more important than people know, both locally but also nationally,” Mazzotta said. “It’s making space and acknowledging people that shaped our lives, which can get, you know, put away into the dustbins of history. But this is saying ‘No, this will be remembered, and we will speak about this.’”
Voting for the People’s Choice category in the 2024 CODAawards Top 100 is currently open and closes July 2 at 11:59 p.m. To vote, visit shorturl.at/I3ogg. No login is required.
