{"id":155813,"date":"2026-04-02T23:01:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/155813\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T23:01:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:01:06","slug":"vote-for-which-original-quote-will-appear-on-the-harriet-tubman-statue-in-center-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/155813\/","title":{"rendered":"Vote for which original quote will appear on the Harriet Tubman statue in Center City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A contest is underway to select the quote that will appear on the soon-to-be-installed Harriet Tubman statue in Center City.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In February, Philadelphia officials released an open call asking for an original quote to appear on the back of the base of the 15-foot sculpture. Two other quotes from the abolitionist will appear on the sides. Now, residents are being asked to <a data-original-title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cognitoforms.com\/OACCE\/PublicSurveyInHarrietsFootsteps\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">choose<\/a> one of six submissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.phillyvoice.com\/no-arena-chinatown-protest-exhibit\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8216;No Arena&#8217; exhibit links Chinatown&#8217;s fight against 76 Place to America&#8217;s founding<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The contest, which was hosted by the city&#8217;s office of arts and culture, Creative Philadelphia, was open to anyone who lives or works in the city. Officials asked for a one- or two-sentence response to the question, &#8220;What does it mean to walk in Harriet Tubman&#8217;s footsteps today?&#8221; Answers could be literal, narrative or metaphorical, but they must be unattributed to any existing person or entity and reference the civil rights leader&#8217;s impact on future generations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Voting is open until April 30, and the winner will be announced in May. Here are the six contenders:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 &#8220;Choose courage over conformity; freedom over fear; liberation over limitation.&#8221;<br \/>\u2022 &#8220;May courage, even in the face of oppression, always be our North Star.&#8221;<br \/>\u2022 &#8220;When freedom was only a whisper, she became its voice.&#8221;<br \/>\u2022 &#8220;Carry your light into the dark, for on the other side of fear is freedom.&#8221;<br \/>\u2022 &#8220;She did not consider herself a hero, she just did what she knew was right.&#8221;<br \/>\u2022 &#8220;She knew the way forward was going back.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Creative Philly said that it had 160 submissions in total. The final choice will be attributed to &#8220;A Philadelphia citizen&#8221; on the statue, and the writer&#8217;s name will be on a credit panel for the installation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The selected quotes from Tubman will be:\u00a0\u201cAnd I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight,\u201d and \u201cFor no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"\">The city decided to erect a permanent statue of Tubman after a temporary one was placed outside City Hall in 2022. The artist of that sculpture was initially given $500,000 to create it, but residents complained about the lack of open submissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"\">Artist Alvin Pettit&#8217;s work, a bronze depiction of Tubman praying, was selected from five finalists. It was initially scheduled for completion in 2025, but no new timeline on its installation has been revealed yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A contest is underway to select the quote that will appear on the soon-to-be-installed Harriet Tubman statue in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12287,50864,69,71,70,50863,43865],"class_list":{"0":"post-155813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-arts-culture","9":"tag-harriet-tubman","10":"tag-philadelphia","11":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","12":"tag-philadelphia-news","13":"tag-quotes","14":"tag-statues"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}