Women In The National Statuary Hall

Women in the National Statuary Hall
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Did you know that there is a National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.? Each state may contribute two statues. Each state has done so – there are 100 statues in total. Out of 100, nine are women – yep, nine percent. In addition to the six women discussed below (all of whom have been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame), the remaining three statues are of Mother Joseph (Washington), Esther Hobart Morris (Wyoming), and Maria Sanford (Minnesota). Match the woman with her accomplishment:

_____ 1. Noted advocate for people with disabilities, she was rendered blind and deaf at 19 months old.

_____ 2. In 1925, the first woman elected to the National Academy of Scinces.

_____ 3. A founder and long-term president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

_____ 4. In 1916, the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

_____ 5. The Lemhi Shoshone woman who, with her infant son, accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

_____ 6. She was an advocate for her tribe, the Northern Paiute, and documented the history of her people.

A. Sakakawea (North Dakota)

B. Sarah Winnemucca (Nevada)

C. Frances Willard (Illinois)

D. Helen Keller (Alabama)

E. Jeannette Rankin (Montana)

F. Florence Sabin (Colorado)

Sakakawea (whom many of us know with the spelling Sacagawea) was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who served as a guide and translator for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. During 1804-1805, she and her infant son, along with her husband, accompanied the Expedition through North Dakota and west to the Pacific Ocean. Because her infant son was with the expedition, it was regarded by the native tribes along the way as peaceful. At one point, her resourcefulness saved papers and other records from a capsizing boat. A dollar coin has been issued in her image and many natural features are named for her. The date of her death remains elusive.

An advocate for the rights of Native Americans, Sarah Winnemucca was galvanized to action after her mother was killed by the U.S. Cavalry in 1865. A member of the Northern Paiute tribe in Nevada, she traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby the U.S. Congress for the release from prison of members of her tribe. In addition, she was a messenger, interpreter, guide and teacher. Her 1883 book titled Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims is both her memoir and a history book of her people. After its publication, she toured the U.S. giving lectures. Subsequently, she returned to Nevada and established a school for Native American children.

An activist in the areas of temperance and women’s suffrage, Frances Willard significantly influenced the passage and ratification of the Eighteenth (prohibition) and Nineteenth (suffrage) amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In 1874, Willard participated in the founding of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, an organization established to work for the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. Willard was elected President of the WCTU in 1879 and would hold that office until her death in 1898. She pushed a social reform agenda that included the expansion of women’s rights; she believed that if women had the right to vote that they would be able to protect themselves from the violence inflicted on them by drunken men. Willard will also an advocate of prison and labor reform.

Losing her sight and hearing from disease at the age of 19 months, Helen Keller (with the assistance of Anne Sullivan Macy – her teacher) demonstrated to the world that disability does not equate to lack of intelligence. After graduating from Radcliffe College in 1904, Keller became a world-famous author and speaker. She advocated for people with disabilities and was also a woman’s rights activist and a pacifist. In 1920, she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. Keller published 12 books and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon B. Johnson. Movies have been made of her life including The Miracle Worker, which won two Academy Awards.

The first woman elected to the U.S. Congress – in the House of Representatives in 1916 - Jeannette Rankin assumed her office in 1917. A committed pacifist, she was not interested in voting to allow the U.S. to enter World War I. The leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, aware that to many Jeannette represented “all women” encouraged her to change her mind. A woman of ethics and values, she remained steadfast and was one of the members of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into World War I. In 1941, when she was elected again to the U.S. House of Representatives, she was the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into World War II. She famously said “We are half the people, we should be half the Congress.”

A woman of many firsts, in 1925, Florence Sabin was the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Born and raised in Colorado, she attended and graduated from Smith College before pursuing her medical studies at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine starting in 1896. She pursued the field of anatomical research instead of medical practice. Her book An Atlas of the Medulla and the Midbrain became the standard text in the field. In 1903, she became the first woman on the faculty at Hopkins, becoming the first woman full professor in 1917. In 1924, she became the first woman to serve as president of the American Association of Anatomists. After her retirement in 1938, she returned to Colorado where she advocated for health reform and oversaw the enactment of health legislation known as the Sabin program.

Learn about more she-roes and celebrate amazing women. These women featured in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol are among the more than 850 women profiled in the book Her Story: A Timeline of the Women Who Changed America. I am proud to tell women’s stories and write women back into history. I stand on their shoulders.

(Answers: 1-D, 2-F, 3-C, 4-E, 5-A, 6-B)

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