The plaza was established on March 9, 1978, by the Arizona Legislature.[1] It was named for GovernorWesley Bolin, who had died five days previously. The site was part of the Legislative Governmental Mall. The entire Mall is often referred to as the plaza.
Much like the National Mall on which it is loosely based, the Legislative Governmental Mall is intended as an open-air public space with monuments, memorials and gardens. Some of these monuments were erected before the plaza itself, such as the monument to USS Arizona, dedicated on December 7, 1976.
Panorama of numerous memorial stones in Wesley Bolin Memorial PlazaVeterans of World War I MemorialVeterans of the Battle of the Bulge MemorialThe Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. MemorialMurdered Children Memorial
The memorial to commemorate the September 11, 2001, attacks was unveiled on the fifth anniversary of the attacks, September 11, 2006. After some people complained that the memorial contained anti-American sentiment, the commission in charge of the memorial's design and construction has promised to review it and make changes if necessary. Despite the controversy surrounding the memorial, no changes to the monument had ever been publicly declared and today remains a permanent fixture in the plaza.[5]
Arizona Confederate Troops Memorial
Navajo Code Talkers Memorial
In the early 1960s, the United Daughters of the Confederacy funded a "Memorial to Confederate Soldiers" as part of the group's efforts to memorialize the short-lived eight-month occupation (August 1861 to March 1862) of the so-called Confederate Arizona. On June 19, 2020, Sean Brennan doused the stone "Memorial to Confederate Soldiers" with red paint before a protest in support of Black Lives Matter.[6]
On June 30, 2020, the Daughters of the Confederacy requested state officials to return the monument in addition to the Jefferson Davis Highway monument. On July 23, 2020, the monument was removed from the plaza.[7][8]
