Five Finalists Named for Rekia Boyd Monument in Douglass Park

Five artists have been selected as finalists to design a permanent monument honoring Rekia Boyd in North Lawndale’s Douglass Park, the nonprofit A Long Walk Home announced during a Nov. 5 ceremony at the Nichols Tower, 906 S. Homan Ave.

The finalists are Nina Cooke John, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Tiff Massey, Sonja Henderson, and Nekisha Durrett. The Rekia Boyd Monument Project extends more than a decade of public-art activations led by A Long Walk Home’s Girl/Friends Leadership Institute in and around Douglass Park. The initiative asks a central question: How do we build a monument that commemorates Rekia Boyd’s legacy and celebrates Black girlhood?

Boyd, 22, was killed in 2012 by an off-duty Chicago police detective, a case that helped galvanize a generation of organizers to demand justice for Black women and girls harmed by state violence. Girl/Friends youth leaders have long honored her through murals, photography, performances, and healing-centered programming created in the neighborhood she called home.

A Long Walk Home — a Black women–led arts organization that trains young people to end violence against girls and women — is leading the monument effort in partnership with the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), the Chicago Park District, and Monument Lab, as part of the broader Chicago Monuments Project.

According to WBEZ Chicago, the Rekia Boyd Monument is one of eight new monuments funded through a partnership between DCASE and the Mellon Foundation. The institutions have invested $250,000 in the project so far.

For Paul Farber, executive director of Monument Lab, the initiative reflects a shift in who gets commemorated and how cities tell their stories.

“Nothing is born as a monument,” Farber told WBEZ. “A monument is a statement of presence and power in public.”

Project leaders at the Nov. 5 event described the monument as both a long-awaited tribute to Boyd and a transformative cultural investment in North Lawndale, where Black girls have shaped community life for generations yet remain largely absent from Chicago’s commemorative landscape.

A Long Walk Home and Monument Lab issued an open call for artists in the summer. The five finalists will refine their concepts in the coming months. A final artist selection is expected after a period of public engagement and review.