Clinton, Jackson Lee Celebrate Enactment of Law to Honor Sojourner Truth

Clinton, Jackson Lee Celebrate Enactment of Law to Honor Sojourner Truth

Legislation Requires Statue of Sojourner Truth Be Placed in United States Capitol

Today on Capitol Hill, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX-18) held a celebration of the enactment of legislation they sponsored and the President signed into law requiring that a statue of Sojourner Truth be placed permanently in the United States Capitol to honor her contribution to our nation's history. Representative Jackson Lee and Senator Clinton were joined at today's celebration by prominent women leaders and activists, including Representative Diane Watson (D-CA); Dorothy Height, Chair, National Council of Negro Women; Dr. E. Faye Williams, National Chairperson, National Congress of Black Women; Eleanor Smeal, President, Feminist Majority Foundation; Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women; award winning actress Cicely Tyson and Dr. Thelma T. Daley, past national President of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and current President of Women in the NAACP (WIN).

"I am proud that finally a memorial to Sojourner Truth will take its rightful and permanent place in the heart of our representative government, the United States Capitol. For generations to come, visitors to our nation's capitol will learn about her courage, perseverance and historic contribution in the face of incredible hardship. This is a fitting and long overdue tribute to a woman who deserves to be honored as a true American hero," said Senator Clinton.

"The recognition by the Congress and the President that Sojourner Truth, one of the nation's greatest women's rights leaders, should be honored in the Capitol is both well deserved and long overdue. Her great advocacy on behalf of women, despite all the hardships she faced, makes Sojourner Truth truly deserving of representation along side the other great suffragists whose proud figures are placed in the Capitol. So speaks the Congress of the United States. Passage of this important measure also is a fitting tribute the late Dr. C. Delores Tucker, past President of the NCBW, whose efforts helped make this achievement possible," stated Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.

The landmark legislation calls on the Joint Committee on the Library to accept a donation of a bust of Sojourner Truth, no later than two years after the date of the enactment of the bill, to be displayed in a suitable permanent location in the U.S. Capitol Building. The bill was signed into law by the President on December 20, 2006.

Isabella Baumfree was born into slavery in New York's Hudson Valley in 1797. After gaining her freedom in 1826 she moved to New York City and by 1843 had changed her name to Sojourner Truth. For much of her adult life she traveled the country preaching for the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage. After attending the 1850 National Woman's Rights Convention, Truth made women's suffrage a focal point of her speeches, portraying women as powerful, independent figures. Her most famous speech, "Ain't I A Woman," given at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, has become a classic text on women's rights. Sojourner Truth was a powerful figure within several additional national social movements, including the abolition of slavery, the rights of freedmen, temperance, prison reform, and the termination of capital punishment.

Sojourner Truth died November 26, 1883 in Battle Creek, Michigan. She has since been inducted into both the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame (1983) and the National Women's Hall of Fame (1981) in Seneca Falls, New York. A United States Postage Stamp was dedicated in her honor at the Sojourner Truth Library in New Paltz, New York, on February 5, 1986.

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=269374&&