This morning Congress unveils a statue of Sojourner Truth. She is the first African American woman to have a memorial bust in the United States Capitol building
“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.”
-Melissa Harris-Lacewell @ Politico
Source: thetart
