Truly statuesque

Last week, after the city moved a little bronze girl from her Bowling Green perch, we noted that New York’s real public-art outrage is the paucity of monuments dedicated to the real women who have shaped our city, state and nation. Of 150 statues of historical figures here, only five are of women.

She Built NYC, an initiative led by First Lady Chirlane McCray, aims to correct the imbalance. Unlike the exhausting exercise in political posturing that was last year’s search for what Mayor de Blasio called “symbols of hate,” this has the potential to be genuinely educational.

As evidenced by the panel’s first choice: Rep. Shirley Chisholm.

The Brooklyn-born daughter of West Indian immigrants was the first black woman elected to Congress, in 1968. There, among many other things, she played an instrumental role in creating the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program we know today, and pressed for domestic workers to get the minimum wage.

Most famously, she was the first black woman to run for President, declaring herself “unbought and unbossed” as she sought the Democratic nomination in 1972.

May the girls and boys of Brooklyn who stare up at her visage starting in 2020 learn from the power of her example.