Today Congress will unveil a new bust of Sojourner Truth in the U.S. Capitol. She's the first black woman to be honored there. This is a far cry from the last time Congress proposed "honoring" a black woman, Melissa Harris Lacewell writes:
It is important to remember that Truth is not the first black woman for proposed to be enshrined on federal land. In 1923, Mississippi senator, John Williams proposed a bill seeking a site for a national Mammy monument. The Richmond, Virginia chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was prepared to pay for the statue, which would stand on federal land "as a gift to the people of the United States . . . a monument in memory of the faithful colored mammies of the South." The statue would have been in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, which had just been dedicated a few months. The "mammy bill" passed the Senate in February 1923 just weeks after the Senate defeated the Dyer anti-lynching bill. In other words, even while refusing to protect African American citizens from the domestic terrorism of the lynch mob, the Senate referred the mammy monument bill to the House of Representatives.Whenever I am in Washington, DC I try to imagine the psychic assault I would suffer if I had to walk past a granite mammy statue while on the National Mall. Thankfully, fierce and prolonged resistance to the mammy monument undertaken by the black press, black women's organizations, and ordinary citizens kept this horrifying possibility from being reality.
Black women's organizations defeated the mammy memorial nearly 100 years ago and today they are largely responsible to raising up the bust of Sojourner Truth. The National Congress of Black Women, Inc. (NCBW) worked tirelessly to cultivate donors and supporters for this cause. Because of their efforts, instead of a monument to the mythical figure of a happy, faithful, feisty, loyal black woman slave, America will today memorialize a dedicated, serious, freedom-fighting black woman. In commemorating Truth the nation invests in remembering the deeply human and complicated stories of the lives of black women.
Wow. Certainly puts today's milestone in a whole new perspective, doesn't it?
UPDATE: Clip of the unveiling via Jack and Jill Politics.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Sojourner Truth honored in the Capitol.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/13339
Speaking of honoring amazing black women, the University of Texas at Austin just recently unveiled a statue honoring civil rights champion Barbara Jordan. The statue is the result of a student-led initiative by a woman's volunteer and service organization that noticed that women were not represented by the public art on the UT campus. It's awesome to see the accomplishments of women like Sojourner Truth and Barbara Jordan honored like this.
http://www.utexas.edu/news/200/04/2/barbara_jordan_statue_unveiled/
A granite "mammy" would have forever sealed bad karma for this country. What strikes me about Madam Truth is she lows enslaved people especially black women as an active agent of forceful liberation. She was a warrior.
wow, I was expecting more than two whole comments.
I hear you on wanting to see comments as a measure of how interested readers are in a particular topic, but that's just not true. When we did a reader survey awhile back, a very small percentage of folks who read Feministing say they ever comment. And often the posts that get the most links or are the most read are NOT the ones with the most comments. I'm constantly surprised by which posts are most-commented and which have zero.
So glad that you wrote about this. I work at the capitol visitors center where the ceremony was and were the bust is located. The bust is beautiful. I wish that I could have watched the ceremony but I was working other places. In the next few months there will also be a statue of Helen Keller dedicated. So glad that more women are getting represented in the Capitol!
This is wonderful news.
I must be honest: I thought at first that Melissa Harris Lacewell's piece was a "bit" from the Onion or something. I guess I wish even a passing notion of a "mammy monument" was a joke...
I thought that "mammy" bit was from the Onion at first too. Scary that people actually thought that up.
As for Sojourner's bust, I was in tears seeing the picture of Michelle at the unveiling. Simply beautiful.
Very important moment for the country. Thank you for posting this. Sojourner Truth was a warrior and she deserves this honor.
Last month I posted on a connection between Michelle and Sojourner--via their arms in response to a foolish comment by David Brooks: http://misscavendish.blogspot.com/2009/03/call-to-arms-maureen-dowd-and-david.html It's terrific to see these two deserving women in Washington.
Wow, I've never heard about the 'mammy monument' before. How disgusting, and what a slap in the face to women like Sojourner Truth.
I'm so glad to know that it's been corrected, and she's getting viable, concrete recognition for the work that she did.
Awesome.
Whew I just got through watching parts of the commemoration. Cicely Tyson's retelling of Truth's speech was so moving! This is wonderful.
Blacks are ought to enjoy the same rights and privileges as the other races. Anyway they only differ in complexion. Discrimination may lead into war due to the misunderstanding and injustice that it causes. Joe Biden has made Dick Cheney look good. Joe Biden has now achieved what was once thought to be impossible, by his leaking the location of the Biden bunker. The Biden Bunker is the secure location that the Vice President goes to in the event of a terrorist attack or other disaster. We now know the Biden Bunker is at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Many would give cash loans to get Joe Biden to clam up from now on. He gave this all away at an appearance at the Gridiron Club. (Was an open bar a factor?) Perhaps Joe Biden could get some lessons on restraint with the help of a cash loan.