Search results for: US Capitol

A statue of Hellen Keller, an activist, an author, and one of the most famous blind-deaf persons in the world, is standing in the US Capitol Visitor Center Emancipation Hall, as a gift from the state of Alabama to the National Statuary Hall Collection. The bronze statue is depicting one of Keller’s life-changing moments when she learned to connect between words and concepts. It happened when she was 7 years old while standing by a water pump, the water was pouring on her hand, and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, wrote the letters W-A-T-E-R on her hand, and Keller understood the connection. It is the only statue in the US capitol of a person with a disability and of a child. Created by the artist Edward Hlavka and was dedicated on October 7th, 2009. Keller’s quote written on the base of the statue, both in English and braille letters – “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.”   Read more...

A marble statue of Frances E Willard has been on display in the Statuary Hall in the US Capitol in Washington, DC since 1905, representing the state of Illinois. Among the many firsts attributed to Willard is this statue which was the first statue to honor a woman in the National Statuary Hall Collection. It was created by the sculptress Helen Farnsworth Mears, one of the first and one of the few women who have their work displayed in the US Capitol. Frances E. Willard (1839-1898) was an educator, suffragist, and president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Among her many accomplishments are – becoming the president of Evanston College for Ladies by the age of 32, leading the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) for 19 years, making it the largest organization of women at the time. At this position, she toured the country, giving speeches, advocating for prohibition, women’s rights, the suffrage movement, labor reform, and education, encouraging women to be involved in local and national politics, and supporting social change. Read more...

The bronze statue of the politician and pacifist Jeannette Rankin stands in the US Capitol Visitor Center Emancipation Hall. It was donated to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Montana in 1985 and created by Montana artist Terry Mimnaugh. On the statue, her words are engraved: “I Cannot Vote For War.” Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) was the first woman to be elected to the US House of Representatives in 1916, four years before the 19th amendment ratification to the US Constitution, granting American women their right to vote. Rankin served twice as a Republican Representative of Montana in the House 1917-1919 and 1941-1943. She advocated for women’s rights, social welfare, and pacifism. In both her terms of service, she stayed true to her principles and opposed US involvement in world wars, even when it cost her political career. Rankin’s statue is one of the few female statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection, which has 100 sculptures in total. Read more...

A bronze statue of Maria Sanford holding a book standing as if she is lecturing in a class stands in the US Capitol Visitor Center Emancipation Hall. It was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Minnesota in 1958, commemorating Sanford’s legacy and contribution. Maria Sanford (1836-1920) grew up and started her teaching career in Connecticut, teaching at local schools and studying at the Connecticut Normal School. At 31, she moved to Pennsylvania to work as a school principal, and two years later, Sanford got hired as a history professor at Swarthmore College, PA, becoming one of the first female professors in the US. At 44, Sanford accepted a tenure position at the University of Minnesota, teaching rhetoric, elocution, literature, and art history for nearly thirty years. In addition to being a university professor, she coached teachers on new teaching methods, founded parent-teacher organizations, gave public speeches, and advocated for multiple causes, such as women’s rights, education of blacks, adult education, healthcare, and environmental preservation. The Minnesota sculptress Evelyn Raymond got the commission to create the statue. Besides sculpturing, Raymond also taught and led the sculpture department at the Walker Art Center and founded the Minnesota Sculpture Society. 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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...