Florida commissioned the project after a grassroots campaign succeeded last year in removing a statue of Edmund Kirby Smith, among the last Confederate generals to surrender after the Civil War. Bethune joins John Gorrie, a pioneer in air conditioning and refrigeration, in representing Florida. Bethune was born in South Carolina in , seven years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, with its guarantee of equal protection under the law for all in the United States. She died in , having helped to lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement.
Mary McLeod Bethune is perhaps most remembered for founding the school now known as Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida, which she started as a girls school in She also was one of the founders of the United Negro College Fund, which became a financial backbone for predominantly Black higher institutions nationwide. She was the Booker T. Washington of her time. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. To Democratic Rep. The white marble statue shows Bethune in academic robes, holding a black rose.
The statue of Kirby Smith — who fled to Mexico fearing treason charges after surrendering in Galveston, Texas, on May 26, — was installed in the Capitol in , during a decade when Black people in Florida were being lynched for trying to vote and white mobs burned down entire towns. In , civil rights figure Rosa Parks became the first Black woman to be depicted in a full-length statue in Statuary Hall, but she is not part of the National Statuary Hall Collection, according to the Architect of the Capitol.
On Dec. Parks died in Associated Press video journalist Rick Gentilo contributed to this report. Skip to content.
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