#national statuary hall

[adayephoto]

Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Statue in Florida

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to photograph the larger-than-life marble statue of civil rights pioneer, presidential advisor and renowned Black educator, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, at the News-Journal Center in Daytona Beach, FL before it was being transferred to the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. As the first state-commissioned statue of an African American, this project was led by University of Florida alum Bob Lloyd and sculpted by artist Nilda Comas, the first artist of Puerto Rican descent commissioned to sculpt a statue for the National Statuary Hall Collection. 

The statue is made of Italian Carrara marble and carved by Comas in Pietrasanta, Italy. The combined statue and pedestal are 11 feet tall and weigh 6,129 pounds. Comas depicts an imposing, mature Bethune looking slightly downward, as though at a child. Her benevolent smile conveys her determined yet gentle demeanor. She holds a walking stick in her right hand and a black marble rose in her left, and she wears academic garb, including a mortarboard cap and tassel and a long robe. A dress with embroidered collar and lace details and a simple pearl necklace are visible below the open robe. Her shoes, with laces and sturdy heels, evoke pairs she wore when photographed in similar attire.

Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune was the founder of Bethune-Cookman College, Florida’s first institution of higher education for African Americans. Dr. Bethune’s statue replaced the statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. 

[postmarq]

The Father Marquette statue represents the State of Wisconsin in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection.

[vox-anglosphere]

The Marble Saloon in Stowe House has been beautifully restored!

[usnatarchives]

WWII 6888th Central Postal Battalion vet Romay Davis, 102, Jay Reeves/AP.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at Dedication Ceremony Honoring Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, 7/13/2022 (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post).

Black Women ROCK (US history)! By Miriam Kleiman, Public Affairs

Two BIG story updates: Mary McLeod Bethune Returns to the Hill (7/13/2022) (Figuratively) topples Confederate Statue! 1st Black American in Statuary Hall! See related NARA Tumblr post. Dr. Bethune joined Old Boys Club on Capitol Hill (90 of the 100 statues there are of men) as an impressive 3 ton, 11 foot statue in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.

80 years late, WWII vet Romay Davis is recognized (7/25/2022) Davis was part of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-female unit to serve in Europe in WWII, led by Major Charity Adams, the highest-ranking Black woman in the Army during WWII. See: Black Female WWII Unit Gets (Congressional) GOLD!

More amazing facts about Dr. Bethune:

1st Black woman to lead a federal agency.

1st Black women with a university founded in her name.

Founder of the National Council of Negro Women

More amazing facts about Ms. Davis:

She earned a martial arts black belt while in her late 70s!

She went back to work at grocery store in Montgomery, AL, and retired only last year, at age 101!

The 6888th by the #s:

855 - # of Black women in the 6888th

3 - # of months it took them to clear a 6-month backlog of mail.

3 separate 8-hour shifts, 7 days a week - work hours.

65,000 - # of pieces of mail processed per shift

17 million - # of pieces of mail processed by the conflict’s end.

77 years - # of years wait for these women to be honored by Congress

Connection between the two? Mary McLeod Bethune worked with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to establish the Women’s Army Corps, and advocated for the inclusion of Black women who wanted to contribute to the war effort.

“Somewhere in England, Maj. Charity E. Adams,…and Capt. Abbie N. Campbell, …inspect the first contingent of Negro members of the Women’s Army Corps assigned to overseas service.” 2/15/1945. NARA ID 16214.

Much more online:

We honor WW2’s #InvisibleWarriors! Black Women in WWII

BLACK (military) NURSES ROCK!

Pictorial History of Black Women in the US Navy during World War II and Beyond, by Dr. Tina Ligon, Rediscovering Black History.

Before Kamala: Black Women in Presidential Administrations, Rediscovering Black History

Official Personnel Folder for Mary McLeod Bethune, NARA ID 158329664.

Mary Bethune: Adviser to Presidents, Hoover Heads blog

Providing a New Deal for Young Black Women: Mary McLeod Bethune and the Negro Affairs Division of the National Youth Association, Rediscovering Black History.

Featured NARA public program: Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

The Closed Door of Justice: African American Nurses and the Fight for Naval Service, by Alicia Henneberry, The Text Message.

Their War Too: US Women in the Military During WWII, The Text Message

African Americans and the War Industry by Alexis Hill, The Unwritten Record blog

I too, am Rosie by Dr. Tina Ligon, Rediscovering Black History

Women’s History Month and African American History National Archives News special topics pages.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Hi! I love your blog and your take on the nations. Could you please do #5 and/or #8 for Alfred? I love seeing his softer side beneath the bravado he puts on.

5.) What was the last time they cried, and under what circumstances? (Good way to get some *emotional* backstory in.) 

Oppy. The man got so goddamn attached to his wee baby rover (yes Opportunity was huge. No Alfred does not care, she was still his baby.) When space travel becomes more common, he's going to bring her back and she's just going to roam around and no I do not care about realism in this instance because she's a good girl goddamn it. He was sad for weeks and had two crying fits behind a closed door because goddamn he got attached to her.

8.) Describe the place where they sleep. (ie what does their safe space look like. How much (or how little) care / decoration / personal touch goes into it.)

I think Alfred has a nice mix of antique furniture and modern bedding. I always picture his room as having a giant rosewood bed something like this.

But with NASA sheets, an R2D2 shaped throw pillow, and a very accurate painted ceiling of the night sky with glow in the dark paint. Today its in the National Statuary Hall but fuck it, Alfred owns an original of this 1872 painting by Thomas Moran, The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It played a part in President Grant signing the first national park into existence in the same year and Moran painted it while Yellowstone was being surveyed. It marked either one of his few trips east between bailing Matt's ass out during the Fenian raids 1866 and the late 1870s advent of the Gilded age with the rise of the American empire and the organization of labour into unions.

[blackexcellence]

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune statue replaces Confederate General in U.S. Capitol

"The daughter of former slaves, Mary Jane McLeod Bethune became one of the most important black educators, civil and women’s rights leaders and government officials of the twentieth century. The college she founded set educational standards for today’s black colleges, and her role as an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave African Americans an advocate in government."

source

[afarewelltoarmsandpoems]

I didn’t think I was crazy

in any complicated manner—

I forget my father

step-fathers

I don’t take interest in Time’s winged chariot

hurrying near a girl

who can worry and write

—

Source text: Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell To Arms. New York: Scribner, 1929. Print. Pg 135

—

Overlay image source: Carlo Franzoni's 1819 sculptural chariot clock, the Car of History, depicting Clio, the Greek muse of history in National Statuary Hall in 2006

[datarep]

Statues of the National Statuary Hall Collection

by u/Udzu

[libraryjournal]

Willa Cather will be the first Pulitzer Prize winner and the 12th woman represented in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Cather once said in an interview, “I had searched for books telling about the beauty of the country I loved, its romance, and heroism and strength and courage of its people that had been plowed into the very furrows of its soil, and I did not find them. And so I wrote ‘O Pioneers!.’

[southern-god1]

Here’s a story a friend and I collaborated on. Credit goes to my buddy Downbelow82 on Coiledfist.

This was set in an idea I was exploring at the time, where the Civil War is won thanks to Southern giants, and this is set shortly thereafter. Fellow history buffs will notice some famous names: Eiffel is known for his Eiffel Tower, while Bartholdi was the designer of the Statue of Liberty. I loved that ironic touch. Also loved the “tour of devotion” idea for Yankees. And, of course, the cocky country boy Confederate soldier titans!

Anyway, hope y’all like it as much as I did.

-

While it had only been a few years since the war had officially ended, the monuments to the honored, victorious confederates sprouted up and down the Eastern seaboard. While there was no shortage of statuary in the heart of the South itself, usually constructed by an army of enslaved, the Confederate High Commission on Battle Monuments paid especial attention on the construction of monuments in the “Occupied North.” While the monuments in the South were sizable in their own right, the statuary constructed in the captured northern cities, or rather the remains of these cities, from Philadelphia to Boston, were to be mammoth in size.

These massive leviathan structures would rival nothing since ancient times when the Colossus strode the harbor at Rhodes. Much of Washington, the jewel of the former Federal union, was cleared away for the construction of a veritable Valhalla to the honored victorious Army of the South, vast monuments and temples on what used to be the capital city. The construction there continues. From the day of victory to the present day, wage slave laborers and outright slaves work round the clock to bring this sacred sight to fruition.

However, other cities were not without their honored places. In Philadelphia, for example, in the “Night of the Reb’ Purge” as the locals called it, behind closed doors, much of the cities famous sites of Revolutionary fame were destroyed.

At Independence Hall, where that famed document cementing North America’s divorce from the British Empire was signed, all that remained was an empty lot. The old Georgian hall had suffered at the wanton destruction and mercy of the Confederate Super Soldiers and their Giant Legion. While the mass of bricks, timber, and other ruin were carefully excavated from the sight, the massive bootprints of the giant soldiers were purposely left behind, a stark reminder of the power of the Arisen South and their superior military might.

While the massive indentations were left as is, with just the ruins moved out, one exception was made. In one particularly massive boot print were the crushed remains of the once famed Liberty Bell, which was tolled in a fateful July some 4 score and seventy years earlier, as an ex Northern politician once notably put to words. The new masses of second class citizens were made to visit, from separate viewing platforms than the ones used for tourists from the South. The honored Southern tourists watch in amusement as these lower citizens and chattel were made to literally bow before this now deemed “sacred” sight. The way a pilgrim would bow in Lourdes or Mecca, the newly incorporated citizenry would be made to bow with great reverence at the boot print and crushed bell. Before their “tour” was complete, a kiss was required on the banner of Confederate Battle Flag (to which they would also bow, the Battle Flag now a sacred symbol across the nation) and the Stars and Bars. Once done three times in each month, their monthly “service of devotion” was completed, as mandated by law.

Not far from the former site of Independence Hall was a specially constructed, Athenian inspired temple, housing more sacred relics. A pair of massive boots of one of the honored veterans of the Battle of Philadelphia were put on permanent display. The leather of the huge boots, particularly on the tongue area, was faded pale from the hundreds of hands touched upon in daily, rubbing for good luck and reverence. A huge battle flag was proudly on display, to which Northerners bowed and Southerners proudly saluted.

This was all well and good but was not satisfactory enough for the Battle Monuments Commission or the government in the burgeoning metropole of New Richmond. No, something much more groundbreaking would be constructed in the backdrop of the ruins of Independence Hall. While Europe was still in turmoil over the events in North America, maintaining a very uneasy neutrality, a flurry of entrepreneurs flooded into the Confederacy for a chance at opportunity and the age old pursuit of lucre. This included many great European architects and sculptors. A noted many, including a civil engineer named Eiffel and a sculptor named Bartholdi were encouraged to emigrate by the government in New Richmond.

The project in Philadelphia, like many monuments across the great nation, would commemorate the Giant Soldiers of that great war. It would take months of back breaking labor, resulting in the deaths of numerous workers, but an amazing structure would emerge to tower over Philadel,’ nearly 300 feet in height. An ingenious skeletal structure was surrounded by sheets of hammered copper. It was a glorious site to behold as it neared completion. A 300 foot tall recreation of a Confederate soldier, complete with an immensely handsome young face and musculature not so subtly covered beneath his gray battle uniform. In his massive right fist was a towering flagpole, with the Stars and Bars raised and proudly flowing mid air. His left arm held tightly his trusty rifle that had slaughtered easily so many yanks. His even more trusty weapons, his left boot and right boot made their own respective statements.

The massive right boot was frozen in a pivot, grinding a marble sculpture of the old constitution of the Defeated Federal Tyranny. Under the massive left boot, a recreation of the old White House that once sat proudly in Washington City, was in the midst of being crushed by the weight of the powerful young soldier. While the old Republican minded Frenchman, Bartholdi and Eiffel were a bit uncomfortable at the subject matter of this construction, they realized this was the new way of things and were grateful for the work. All effort was put into making the statue a work of perfection and immaculate engineering and structural integrity.

With just one day before the officially planned opening and unveiling ceremonies, an impromptu visit by certain “authorities” was made known to the builders with virtually no time to prepare. The visitors were dispatched from the Confederate Base on the Delaware River, Fort Davis. The occupied cities were no strangers to the giant soldiers who continued to patrol their streets and wreak havoc..or rather, law and order as they saw fit. Philadelphia was no exception.

By noon, the ground began to tremble with a sinister rhythm. A shadow soon cast over the building site. Thousands of laborers froze in place as the team of behemoth white soldiers approached. They were young, between the ages of 18 and 20, and were sent by the Base commander as a show of arrogance. Their huge grey uniforms fluttered in the gust of wind that blew in from the riverside. The bills of their peaked caps kept the upper portions of their faces in shadow, leaving only their smirking mouths visible to the bug sized people below. Finally, the oldest soldier in command, a 20 year old LT stepped forward, his massive boot obliterating a horse and carriage that was unfortunate to be in his path. The god sized soldier spoke, his sexy Southern twang unmistakable.

“WELL…WELL…WELL. WHAT HAVE WE HERE, BOYS? LOOKS LIKE THE CITIZENS HAVE CONSTRUCTED A LIL SOMETHING IN OUR HONOR. WELL, HO-LY SHEE-IT. LOOKS PRETTY DAMN GOOD.”

The men grumbled and laughed.

The foreman cautiously approached the soldiers face, from high atop the wooden scaffolding surrounding the statue. At least a hundred other workers remained frozen in place atop that same scaffold.

‘Please….Monsiuer…we ‘ave labored very very hard…with this great construction….umm…for the honor of your um…les militaires…your giant soldat, Sir.”

The soldier giggled at the heavy accent of the foreman.

“GODDAMN, BOY. YOU SPEAKIN’ WITH MOLASSES IN YOUR MOUTH…YOU NEED TO LEARN SOME ENGLISH NICE AND PROPER, YA HEAR? THAT GOES FOR ALL Y’ALL. THIS IS CONFEDERATE AMERICA, RUNTS. WE FUCKING SPEAK ENGLISH HERE!”

The forman cowered.

“Oui!…Oui, Sir. D’accord!”

“WELL, BOYS…WHAT DO YA THINK?”

The giant young men mumbled to each other.

One Private spoke up.

“LOOKS GOOD, SIR….BUT NEEDS A SLIGHT…”ADJUSTMENT.”

The Private winked, and the other soldiers laughed in agreement.

“WHY, PRIVATE, I DO BELIEVE YOU ARE RIGHT. IT IS DAMN PERFECT. A TRUE REPRESENTATION OF OUR MIGHT…BUT IT DOES INDEED NEED A LIL ADJUSTMENT.”

The LT pointed to the Stars and Bars and a private approached and carefully removed the flag with great respect and care.

“GOOD…DON’T WANNA BE MUSSIN’ UP OUR SACRED FLAG…..NOW…WHERE WAS I….”

The soldier approached the statue, and the scaffold, with absolute disregard and care for the men atop it. His massive muscled arms extended out, crashing into the wooden structure, in order to grapple the statue underneath. The tiny men screamed out in terror and pain as they were crushed or flung to the ground below, the fall killing most. Some, broken and bloodied, were crushed under the soldier’s shifting boots.

The foreman cried out with one last plea.

“Mon Dieu….please!! Do not do is! This is for you, my Lords…why? Why??”

The soldier gave a quick glance and with a flick of his thumb and forefinger, the tiny frenchman was brutally flicked away, his broken dead body landing in one of the nearby Independence Hall boot prints.

The soldier has successfully wrapped around his bulging arms around the statue and began to lift. The accompanying giant young men began to shout their infamous rebel yells as the statue crumbled and separated from its base. The manly grunts could be heard for miles around. The LT smirked so broadly, his pearly white teeth glistened in the sun.

With a few steps, he stood over the remaining laborers and callously dropped the statue. In an instant, a hundred men were crushed or trapped under the iron work and copper. The soldier dusted off his hands and spoke to all around that were still clinging to life.

“IT’S GOOD….A DAMN GOOD STATUE…BUT IT AIN’T FUCKING GOOD ENOUGH…START OVER. BIGGER. BETTER.”

More rebel yells erupted as the soldiers slapped each other on the back and slowly stomped off, crushing as many fleeing Yanks as they could. It was their prerogative to do so and nobody would stomp them. Some, in desperation, ran over to the sacred boot prints and in a religious fervor bowed and prayed for forgiveness from their Southern Gods.

[alphaman99]

Texas Jack Omohundro

Will Rogers, who died on this day in 1935, was the very definition of American.

Born to a Cherokee Nation family in Oologah, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), Rogers joked that though his ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, they "met the boat".

Dog Iron Ranch, the property of Will's father Clement Vann Rogers, had as many as 10,000 Texas longhorns, and Will, the youngest of eight children, grew up in the saddle. An avid reader and good student, Will quickly decided that the saddle was more comfortable than the school desk, and, after dropping out of school in the 10th grade, worked his father's ranch full time.

When he was 22 years old, Will and a friend set off from Oklahoma to Argentina, sure that their cowboy skills would serve them well as gauchos on the Argentine Pampas. They bought a ranch and worked for five months before running out of money. Unwilling to return home and face his father's disappointment, Will boarded a boat to South Africa, where he got a job as a rancher at Mooi River Station.

Soon, a Wild West Circus passed through the area and Will Rogers went to see the show, intent on asking for a job handling the show's livestock. Rogers would later tell a reporter for the New York Times:

"Texas Jack had a little Wild West aggregation that visited the camps and did a tremendous business. I did some roping and riding, and Jack, who was one of the smartest showmen I ever knew, took a great interest in me. It was he who gave me the idea for my original stage act with my pony. I learned a lot about show business from him. He could do a bum act with a rope that an ordinary man couldn't get away with, and make the audience think it was great, so I used to study him by the hour, and from him, I learned the great secret of the show business—knowing when to get off. It's the fellow who knows when to quit that the audience wants more of."

This Texas Jack was not John B. Omohundro. Actually, no one, not even the man himself, knew this Texas Jack's real name. He was born sometime between 1863 and 1867, and his parents had been killed when their wagon train headed west was ambushed, reportedly by a Comanche raiding party. The child had been taken captive, along with two young girls from another family's wagon, but was rescued by the cowboy Texas Jack Omohundro, who delivered the children to a Kansas orphanage, selling the Comanche ponies to provide funding for the children's education. The boy grew up not knowing his name or the names of his parents, only knowing that the man who rescued him was called Texas Jack. After Omohundro's 1880 death, this young man showed up at the Omohundro home in Palmyra, Virginia, asking for the family's blessing to use his rescuer's name as he set off on his own venture into show business.

Initially called Texas Jack Junior, by the time he had established himself as a performer in America and Europe he dropped the "Junior" entirely. By the time Will Rogers asked for a job in Ladysmith, South Africa, his show was billed as Texas Jack's Wild West Circus. According to Rogers, he asked the circus owner if he was really from Texas, if he was related to the famous Texas Jack from the dime novels, and if he had any jobs wrangling horses for the show. Jack Jr. asked the young man if he could put together a rope trick act. The young man said he believed he could and Jack Jr. hired him on the spot, suggesting the young performer adopt the nickname “The Cherokee Kid”. Performing the same lasso act that Texas Jack Omohundro introduced to the world thirty years earlier, this was Will Rogers’ first job in show business.

Will Rogers died in a plane crash with aviation pioneer Wiley Post in Alaska on August 15th, 1935. Before his death, the State of Oklahoma commissioned a statue of him to place in the United States Capital's National Statuary Hall collection. Rogers agreed on the condition that his statue face the House Chamber so that Rogers could "keep an eye on Congress." Since the statue's installation in 1939, each President of the United States of America has rubbed the Will Rogers statue's left foot for good luck before stepping into the House Chamber to deliver the State of the Union address.

[Pictured from left to right: Texas Jack Junior, Lyle Marr (TJ Jr's wife), Clarence Welby Cooke, and Will Rogers.]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News' Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot, McCarthy sources tell me.

• Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.

Why It Matters: Carlson has repeatedly questioned official accounts of 1/6, downplaying the insurrection as "vandalism."

• Now his shows — "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News, and "Tucker Carlson Today" and "Tucker Carlson Originals" on the streaming service Fox Nation — have a massive trove of raw material.

Carlson told me: "[T]here was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret."

• "If there was ever a question that's in the public's interest to know, it's what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It's impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that."

Reality Check: The Jan. 6 committee played numerous excerpts of the footage at last year's captivating hearings. (See the committee's archive.)

Between The Lines: The process with Carlson started in early February, according to a communication between the show and a McCarthy representative that I was shown.

• The archive was previously reported to be 14,000 hours. I'm told it's now much more.

Flashback: McCarthy told reporters in Statuary Hall last month that he thinks "the American public should actually see all [that] happened instead of a report that's written [on] a political basis." (Video, beginning 10:50)

• Pushing for the release of the footage, Carlson argued on his show last month that Washington has "a regime of secrecy and deceit."

Carlson last year called the attack an "outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards."

[robeight]

First Black American Honored in U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall

For the first time, a Black American is being honored with a state-commissioned statue in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Each of the states gets to contribute two statues of prominent citizens for permanent display in the hall and now one of Florida’s contributions is a likeness of educator, humanitarian, and civil rights pioneer Mary McLeod Bethune.

Born to formerly enslaved parents in 1875, Bethune went on to found a private school in Daytona, Florida, for African-American students that would later become Bethune-Cookman University. She was also the sole Black woman to officially be a part of the U.S. delegation that created the United Nations.

The unveiling of the statue was attended by a bi-partisan collection of congressional leaders as well as other lawmakers and activists. The decision to honor Bethune with a statue in the hall was made in 2018 and it is replacing one of a Confederate general.

Source: CNN

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons / public domain

[dixiedrudge]

GOP rep wants ‘Elvis or nothing’ if Mississippi removes Confederate statues from Washington

(Bullshite. – DD) Help Dixie Defeat Big-Tech Censorship! Spread the Word! Like, Share, Re-Post, and Subscribe! There’s a lot more to see at our main page, Dixie Drudge! Each state is allowed two statues inside the National Statuary Hall’s collection with other Southern states such as Florida and Virginia approving measures in recent years to replace Confederate statues (Source) – Weeks after the…