‘Other Washingtons’ Obscures Monument To George With Black Icons Who Share His Name 22%
By Maxwell Evans26%
8/7/2026, 6:22:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Anecdotal, and Appeal to Emotion, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 10.7% saturation with 147 hits. Analysis detected 1,371 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,380 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.3% and a BS Rank of 22% (24,000 of 30,584 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 78.50% of the article peer group.
WASHINGTON PARK — Think about how many Chicagoans lived through Harold’s historic administration, learned about Booker T. in school or — like Ald.
Pat Dowell (3rd) — are in love with Denzel.
They grew up listening to Dinah, their kids have been nurtured by Candice or they’ve watched Laura analyze politics on television.
Any number of Washingtons — those who have shaped world history, and those who have made an impact on their loved ones — are as deserving of public tribute in this city as George Washington, artist Amanda Williams said.
That’s why Williams’ latest work, “ Other Washingtons ,” elevates dozens of names alongside a triumphant monument to the first president and enslaver that’s stood alone for nearly 125 years.
The artwork, a series of flags and educational banners sharing the stories of people with the last name Washington, was unveiled Thursday at the statue near 51st Street and South King Drive.
“For many people, [George Washington] is kind of irrelevant, or a painful symbol of the reality of what this country was founded on,” Williams told Block Club this week.
“But even if you aren’t a Washington, you have a connection to the project because you know a Washington.
A Washington was important to you.”
“This is a perfect moment to honor a new Washington, to honor a new story.”
Banners honoring (from left) Booker T.
Washington and three of his descendants on display during the Aug. 6, 2026 unveiling of “Other Washingtons,” an art installation by Amanda Williams at the George Washington monument near 51st Street and King Drive in Washington Park.
Credit: Maxwell Evans/Block Club Chicago
“Other Washingtons” surrounds the 1902 monument to George Washington, which was created by the same sculptor as Jackson Park’s “Golden Lady” and the iconic, seated Abraham Lincoln at Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial.
When the wind picks up, the flags obscure the nation’s founding father as he sits heroically astride a horse — “he’s there, but he’s beside the point,” Williams said.
The project’s development relied on interviews and submissions from members of the public, who were asked a simple question: “Who is your favorite Washington?”
The question sparked an interest in the topic of rewriting history that may have otherwise been unappealing or frustrating for people to engage with, Williams said.
“In doing that, you get instant buy-in or engagement as people are like, ‘Do I know a Washington?
My cousin is a Washington!
'” she said.
Williams’ creative process allows the local historical memory to be dictated by locals, said Candice Washington, founder of literacy nonprofit Brown Books and Paintbrushes .
She’s one of the “Other Washingtons” — as is her mother, Sonya, and close friend, Rhonda — and as the project’s “educator-in-residence” is helping develop a curriculum around it.
“‘Other Washingtons’ asks a bigger question: Who do we remember, and who gets to remember those folks?
Who gets to be memorialized, and who should make that decision?”
Candice Washington said.
“I think [the answer is], it’s intergenerational.”
Appropriately, one of the artwork’s most radical shifts from a traditional concept of history comes from local youth.
On one banner, high school junior and artist Laila Jean-Baptiste gives her lifelong friendship with fellow high-schooler Kennedy Washington equal standing to George Washington’s military and political achievements.
“Kennedy is one of my best friends,” Jean-Baptiste wrote.
“God blessed me with someone who offers me a whole new perspective on life and pushes me to be the best version of myself.
She will forever be my friend and a newfound sister.”
The honor has helped reframe Kennedy Washington’s relationship to her name, she said.
She knows that, as a Black person in the United States, her last name can likely be traced to a family history of enslavement, she said.
But seeing her name alongside fellow Washingtons like George Washington Carver and Frederick Douglass — born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey — provides comfort and inspiration, she said.
“This one banner showed me that [I] belong here.
It shows that [I am] part of this country,” Kennedy Washington told Block Club after the unveiling.
“It changed my mind a little bit, because at first I didn’t like my name.
But now I am very proud of it, because it’s up here.
People recognize it.
People care about it.
“I feel better.
[Washington] doesn’t feel as painful.”
Kennedy Washington (right) poses with loved ones below a banner in her honor during the Aug. 6, 2026 unveiling of “Other Washingtons,” an art installation by Amanda Williams at the George Washington monument near 51st Street and King Drive in Washington Park.
Credit: Maxwell Evans/Block Club Chicago
George Washington’s monument has had little impact on Williams’ relationship to Washington Park.
Trained as an architect, the park has meant more to her as a contributor to Chicago’s boulevard system and for its beautiful landscape than as a tribute to the president, she said.
Despite her own indifference, the process of creating “Other Washingtons” led Williams to better understand the statue’s importance to nearby residents.
That reverence typically isn’t for George Washington himself, but for his monument as a shaded respite, a place to play dominoes or a walking path to school, she said.
Williams, who lives north of the park in Bronzeville, said it’s important for visitors to understand the monument was already an “interactive” space before “Other Washingtons” was installed there, she said.
“I was surprised how beloved the [existing monument] is to many of the neighbors, the residents that are in walking distance, at the more pedestrian scale,” Williams said.
“They’re not sitting around like, ‘Remember George?’
But he is important.
“People would stop at the light [amid ‘Other Washingtons” creation] and say, ‘You’re not taking that away, are you?’
I was shocked at the number of people that seemed to be concerned that he was going away.”
“Other Washingtons” was commissioned through the Chicago Monuments Project , a city-backed effort to better “reflect the city’s diversity” and “tell a fuller, more truthful” version of history through new public art.
Last month, the monuments project broke ground on the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial , just blocks away from “Other Washingtons” near the 55th Street entrance to Washington Park.
Others include the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project and a memorial to Rekia Boyd, the 22-year-old killed in 2012 by off-duty Chicago Police officer Dante Servin.
In total, eight monuments will be created through the project, which “all are about a reckoning; all are about accountability; all are an invitation for people to get involved,” Williams said.
Artist Amanda Williams (seated, second from right) listens to speakers during the Aug. 6, 2026 unveiling of “Other Washingtons,” her latest installation at the George Washington monument near 51st Street and King Drive in Washington Park.
City officials including Mayor Brandon Johnson (far left) attended the unveiling.
Credit: Maxwell Evans/Block Club Chicago
Public engagement is a throughline in Williams’ artistic practice, but the 2022 MacArthur “Genius Grant” awardee took a new approach to interactivity with “Other Washingtons.”
Her past works, such as when volunteers planted 100,000 tulips in the Washington Park neighborhood to visualize the practice of redlining or painted soon-to-be-demolished homes , have usually been “short activations.”
They were intended as much for the resulting, temporary visuals as for the spontaneous connections among participants, she said.
But “Other Washingtons” will remain “as long as there’s a will for it to be there,” she said.
It was designed for people to continue sharing anecdotes and tributes about their beloved Washingtons through the project’s website , which could be added to the project as it’s updated in the years to come.
Eventually, oversight of the project can be handed off to the Washington Park community.
What exactly that looks like remains to be seen, Williams said.
Future production of “Other Washingtons” could be entrusted to students and teachers at nearby Dyett High School to maintain and evolve the project through their civics or art classes.
Or, perhaps, a neighbor who loved Harold Washington wants to take on the project solo and “steward every flag [to be] about Harold,” Williams said.
“That is what community engagement is,” Williams said.
“It doesn’t have to be present tense and finite.”
Speakers
4speakers58%attributed speech575writer words
Selected voice
86%flagged-word coverageLaila Jean-Baptiste
71 attributed words8.8% of attributed speech41% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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