On June 7th, 2023, Nebraska dedicated the statue of the author Willa Cather to the National Statuary Hall Collection. Her statue is the 12th statue honoring a woman in the collection, the first of a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the first that an African-American sculptor created. Willa Cather (1873-1947) relocated from Virginia to frontier Nebraska when she was 9. Soon she started writing and publishing in local newspapers. At 16, Cather studied science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln while continuing to write, edit and publish in journals and magazines. Soon, she realized writing was her true passion and changed her major to English, graduating in 1895. Cather moved to Pittsburgh and worked as a writer and editor in local newspapers and as a teacher in several high schools. At 30, she published her first poetry collection, followed by her first short stories collection. Nine years later, while living in New York City, Cather published her first novel, the first of 12 she would write. She became known for portrayals of the frontier, pioneering settlers, and their relationships with the western landscapes, often drawing inspiration from her experiences and the people she encountered while growing up in Nebraska. In 1923, Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours (Published in 1922). In her lifetime, she wrote 12 novels, two poetry books, and seven short story collections (three were published post-mortem). The sculptor Littleton Alston won the commission for the statue. He depicted Cather as a confident writer at around age 40, holding pen and papers in her left hand and a walking cane in her right, walking in the Nebraska prairie, the scenery of many of her writings. Next to her on the ground are the Nebraska state flower, the goldenrod, and the Nebraska state bird, the Western meadowlark). A snake ring on her left hand and the embroidered details wool jacket represent her love of fashion. The pedestal reads: “Willa Cather AUTHOR 1873- 1947 “The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.” O PIONEERS!” Read more...

On February 27th, 2013, Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon, made history again when her statue was unveiled in the US Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, the first full-length statue of an African American in the Capitol. Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was born and raised in Alabama. She lived on a farm, attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and studied at a rural school. Her mother taught her to sew at a young age, and she later became a seamstress. In 1932, she married Raymond Parks, a barber and member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Montgomery. Several years later, Parks also joined NAACP and became the secretary. On December 1st, 1955, Parks boarded the bus in downtown Montgomery and sat in the first row of the black section. When the white section of the bus went full, the driver ordered Parks and other passengers to give up their seats and move to the back. Parks refused. She was removed from the bus, got arrested, and convicted. Several days later, Montgomery community leaders launched the Montgomery bus boycott that ended after a year with the US Supreme Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Even though she faced many hardships and life threats as an activist, Parks never stopped advocating and fighting for equal rights. She passed away in 2005 and became the first woman and only the second African-American to lie in state in the US Capitol rotunda. Shortly after, the US Congress authorized the placement of her statue in the US Capitol, the first time since 1873. It is not part of the National Statuary Hall Collection and does not represent a state. Rob Firmin co-designed it with Eugene Daub, who also sculpted it, depicting Parks in bronze, sitting, wearing the same outfit she wore the day she refused to vacate her seat. The pedestal is made of Raven Black granite and inscribed simply with her name and life dates, “Rosa Parks 1913–2005.” President Barak Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the nation’s leaders participated in the unveiling ceremony alongside fellow activists and Parks family members. President Obama said: “Rosa Parks held no elected office. She possessed no fortune; lived her life far from the formal seats of power. And yet today, she takes her rightful place among those who’ve shaped this nation’s course.” Read more...

The bronze sculpture of the first woman justice of the peace in the US and the women’s suffrage advocate Esther Hobart Morris stands in the US Capitol’s Hall of Columns representing Wyoming in the National Statuary Hall Collection. Esther Hobart Morris (1814-1902) was born and raised in a large family in Tioga County, New York. At 21, she left home and opened a millinery business in Owego. In 1869 she and her sons joined her husband and older son at a gold rush camp at South Pass City, Wyoming Territory. On December 10th, 1869, Wyoming secured equal rights for women. Two months later, on February 14th, 1870, her application to become a justice of the peace was approved, and she became the first woman justice of the peace in the US and the first woman to hold judicial office in the modern world. In slightly more than eight months in office, she ruled on 27 cases, including nine criminal cases. A few years later, she left South Pass City, lived in New York and Illinois, and returned to Wyoming in the summers to spend time with her sons. Morris became a supporter and advocate of the American Women’s suffrage movement, attended conventions, served as vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and was a leader in the passage of Wyoming’s suffrage amendment, which got her the nickname “Mother of Suffrage” in Wyoming. Avard Fairbanks sculpted this statue and its replica, which has been standing proudly outside the Wyoming State Capitol since 1963. Read more...

In the exhibition hall at the US Capitol stands the statue of Sakakawea (also Sacagawea, Sacajawea), representing North Dakota to the National Statuary Hall Collection (NSHC). In 1999 North Dakota state legislature approved the donation of the statue of Sakakawea to the NSHC. The statue committee decided to send a replica of the Sakakawea statue that has been standing on the North Dakota State Capitol grounds since 1910. The State Historical Society and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of North Dakota worked for more than three years to raise $200,000 for the 1,200-pound bronze casting of the statue. The Women’s Clubs of North Dakota, then called the North Dakota Federation of Women’s Clubs, also commissioned the original statue and chose Leonard Crunelle to sculpt it. That was one of the first sculptures that honored a woman in the nation. The North Dakota Federation of Women’s Clubs erected it in celebration of the contribution of North Dakotan women to the history of the US. To create an authentic depiction, Crunelle traveled to the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota to sketch Hidatsa figures, learn their costumes, and meet Sakakawea’s granddaughter, Hannah Levings Grant, also known as Mink Woman, who modeled for the statue. Since each state can honor two figures and the Sakakawea statue also depict her son, only she appears on the plaque that reads: “North Dakota Sakakawea A member of the Lewis and Clark expedition 1804-1806” Still, North Dakota is the only state that presents three figures in the NSHC. Her statue was the first nonwhite woman in the NSHC and the 7th of a woman. Two years later, Nevada donated Sarah Winnemucca’s statue to the NSHC. Sakakawea and Winnemucca, along with a depiction of Pocahontas in a painting, are the only Native-American women included in the US Capitol. The statue’s dedication was part of the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Members from the Three Affiliated Tribes participated and performed in the dedication ceremony on October 16th, 2003. Sakakawea(b.1788, death unknown) was a Native-American woman who was one of the members (and the only woman) of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Ocean. She was born into the Shoshone tribe in what is now Idaho. Around the age of 12, Hidatsa Indians captured and took her to live with them in the area that is now North Dakota. Several years later, they sold her to marry a French-Canadian fur trader. In 1804, Lewis and Clark came to the area to prepare for the expedition to the wild west; they hired her husband and took her as an interpreter for the Shoshone people. She gave birth to her son, Jean Baptiste, and carried him on her back on the journey. Sakakawea had a significant role in the expedition’s success, contributing as a diplomat, guide, and translator. Read more...

In a special ceremony on July 27th, 2022, Amelia Earhart Statue was unveiled in the US Capitol by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Kansas Governor Laura Kelly. The statue represents Kansas in the National Statuary Hall collection in the US Capitol. Amelia Earhart (1897-c.1939) was a famous pioneering female aviator who set many aviation records, including the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean. She was also a writer, the co-founder, and the first president of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots, and a businesswoman who promoted commercial air travel. In her attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world, on July 2nd, 1937, she and her navigator disappeared, only three weeks before her 40th birthday. She was declared dead on January 5th, 1939. The bronze statue depicts Earhart as she appeared in many of her photographs. She stands casually, smiling, a determined look on her face. She wears her famous leather jacket and scarf; her left hand holds her aviator’s cap and goggles. Her belt buckle is in the shape of the state of Kansas. A sunflower is inscribed on it, referring to Kansas’s nickname, “Sunflower State.” The inscription on the pedestal reads: KANSAS Amelia Earhart Famous Aviatrix First Woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Earhart’s Statue in the US Capitol was dedicated several months after the dedication of the statue of Mary McLeod Bethune. Click here for a list of all the women who are honored in a statue in the US Capitol. The sculptors Mark and George Lundeen created it. A copy stands in Earhart’s hometown, Atchison, outside the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum since its dedication in September 2022 by Kansas Governor Laura Kelly and Earhart’s great-great niece. Read more...

Outside Ward 4 newest middle school that bears her name, stands a monument honoring the prominent civil rights leader Ida B. Wells; It is the third statue erected in her honor in 2021; the first in Chicago, the second in Memphis, and this one, in the Nation Capital. The statue, AKA, “Shine the Light, Statue to Ida B. Wells,” was unveiled on Sep 16th, 2021, in the presence of her great-granddaughter Michelle Duster. Duster is also the President of the Ida B. Wells Foundation of Chicago, the leader of the efforts to honor Wells with a street and a monument in Chicago, and the writer of the biography: Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells. The sculptress, Ai Qiu Hopen, Humanity Memorial Inc., created the statue, depicting Wells standing next to an open book, holding a lamp that shines a light on Wells’ famous quote: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was born into slavery and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War. Before she was 20, Wells started writing for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper in Memphis, TN, and became the co-owner. To increase national and international awareness of racial violence and lynching, she became an investigative reporter, traveled alone all over the US, researched more than 700 lynching cases, and reported in several newspapers about racial discrimination, lynching, and other crimes that happened to black people. The anti-lynching campaign she led put her life in danger, and after her newspaper got burnt, she relocated to Chicago. She got married, had six kids, and continued her national civil right activism and advocation for racial and gender equality. As a national civil rights leader, she made several trips to Washington, DC. In 1896, she co-founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and in 1913, she marched in the suffrage parade in Washington, DC, alongside the movement leaders. Read more...

An eight-foot-tall white marble statue of the educator, entrepreneur, leader, and activist Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, was contributed to the US National Statuary Hall Collection in the US Capitol on July 13th, 2022, by the state of Florida. It replaced the statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith (dedicated in 1922) and is the first African American statue in the National Statuary Hall collection of 100 sculptures. It is only one of the firsts that are accountable to Bethune (1875-1955). Born the 15th of 17 children to former slaves parents in South Carolina, she was the first in her family to attend school. She was one of the first people who believed in, promoted, and established educational institutions for African-Americans in the US and the first African-American woman who founded a University (the Bethune-Cookman University in 1941). As a civil and women’s rights activist, she was the founder and leader of many organizations, including the National Association of Colored Women, the Southeastern Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and the National Council of Negro Women. She was the first African-American woman to become a division head as the Director of the Division of Negro Affairs, the first to have a role in the first Black Cabinet (under President Roosevelt’s administration), and an adviser to five US presidents. Florida sculptress, Nilda Comas, created the statue using the last and largest block of the finest marble from the Italian Alps and the quarries above Pietrasanta, Italy. She depicted Bethune wearing a cap and gown, symbolizing her lifelong dedication to education, her recognizable wide smile, and the walking stick she received from President Franklin Roosevelt. Her left hand holds a black rose, her favorite flower, and the occasional name she used to describe her students. On the base of the pedestal, along with her name and years, is her famous inspiring quote: “Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it may be a diamond in the rough.” Not far from the US Capitol are the National Council Negro Women headquarters, which she founded in 1935, the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site, and the Mary Mcleod Bethune Memorial in Lincoln Park, where her bronze statue faces the Lincoln statue in the Emancipation Memorial/Freedman’s Memorial. Read more...

A bronze bust of the Sojourner Truth, a famous activist for racial and gender equality, stands at the Emancipation Hall at the US Capitol Visitor Center. It is the first sculpture to honor and celebrate an African-American woman in the US Capitol. Donated by the National Congress of Black Women, the bust was unveiled on April 28th, 2009, in a special ceremony that included the keynote speakers: First Lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. The bust was created by the contemporary figurative artist Artis Lane. Among the many portraits and sculptures of notable people she sculptured are Aretha Franklin, Oprah Winfrey, and the bust of her great, great aunt, Mary Ann Shadd Cary. The latter was an abolitionist, suffragist, journalist, publisher, teacher, lawyer, the first black woman publisher in North America, and Canada’s first woman publisher. Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was born as Isabella Baumfree into slavery and was sold between four different masters in a Dutch-speaking community in New York. At 28, she escaped with her infant daughter, and the Van Wagenen family bought her freedom. She sued her last master for selling one of her sons. She won, regained custody of her son, and became the first black woman to sue a white man in a United States court. She followed a calling to become a preacher in her forties and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She toured and lectured all over the US on abolitionism and women’s rights, including at the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester in 1850 and the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851. On November 26th, 1883, she died at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan. Read more...

A bronze statue of Sarah Winnemucca stands at the Emancipation Hall in the US Capitol Visitor Center, representing the state of Nevada since its dedication on March 9th, 2005. Sarah Winnemucca (1844-1891) was a Northern Paiute leader, negotiator, peacemaker, lecturer, activist, social reformer, teacher, and writer. She was born with the name Thocmentony, Shell Flower, to a Paiute family of leaders, her father was Chief Winnemucca, and her grandfather was Chief Truckee. She grew up and became a teacher, interpreter, and Paiute people promoter in every place she lived. During the Bannock War in 1878, she rescued her father and tribe members from captivity. After the war, she toured the country, giving hundreds of lectures and advocating for equal rights for Native Americans. She assembled her speeches into an autobiography: “Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims,” becoming in 1883 the first Native American woman to publish a book and the first to secure her copyright registration in the US. Later in life, she co-founded a school for Paiute children, teaching them Native American culture and languages. The idea to honor Winnemucca with a statue in the US Capitol was of the Nevada Women’s History Project. When they found out that Nevada has only one sculpture at the National Statuary Hall Collection, they embarked on a campion, gathering the legislators and the people’s support and funding to put the Sarah Winnemucca statue in Washington, DC. The artist, Benjamin Victor, was anonymously chosen to create the statue. He also sculptured two other sculptures for National Statuary Hall Collection. A copy of this statue stands at the Nevada State Capitol Building in Carson City, Nevada. Read more...

A bronze sculpture of Mother Joseph stands at the US Capitol Visitor Center’s Emancipation Hall. It was donated to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Washington state in 1980. Felix de Weldon created it and its replicas. One of which stands in Southwest Washington Medical Center in Vancouver, WA. Mother Joseph (1823-1902) was a Canadian Religious Sister and a leader of the congregation she had established in the Pacific Northwest. When she was twenty years old, she chose religious life and joined the Sisters of Charity of Providence in Montreal, Canada. She had many capabilities, and besides reading, writing, and housework, she knew how to build and design things. She was chosen to lead a group of missionaries to the Pacific Northwest to support the new settlers in the area. They settled in Vancouver, Washington. Over the years, her congregation built eleven hospitals, seven academies, five schools for Native American children, and two orphanages spread over the area that is now Washington, northern Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Mother Joseph was the force behind all of it. She designed some of the buildings and supervised their construction, and for that, she is considered the first female architect in British Columbia and one of the first in the Pacific Northwest. She passed away from a brain tumor, and her final resting place is at the Mother Joseph Cemetery in Vancouver, Washington. The National Statuary Hall Collection contains about 10% statues depicting women. Among them are the statues of Florence R. Sabin, Hellen Keller, Maria Sanford, and Jeannette Rankin. Read more...