Last Call – Ohio Statuary Hall Committee
January 14, 2010
by Lynette Long
|The following article is cross-posted from Lynette Long’s blog. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
If you are still trying to figure out what happened during the 2008 election, you are not alone. If you were shocked at the persistent sexist attacks toward both Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, I am standing right beside you. If you are wondering what we can do so that this never happens again to any woman, the answer is more complex.
The 2008 election did us a favor, it gave us a picture at the depth and level of disrespect toward women in this country. RESPECT is the key issue here. We need to change the way women are viewed in this country and we have to change the way women view themselves. We can do it but it will be one baby step at a time. You can tell your daughter a thousand times a day, that she can be anything she wants to be, but if you take her on a tour of Statuary Hall or any other state capitol the visual overrides the verbal. She “hears” loud and clear, NO YOU CAN’T.
If we want to succeed in electing a woman president from either party, we have to change the way our nation sees women. We have to get women on the currency, in equal numbers on the stamps and commemorated by statues. We have to change our culture. I am asking you one last time, please send a letter to the Ohio Statuary Hall committee and them to put Harriet Beecher Stowe in Statuary Hall. There is lots of good info at wikipedia. They are going to select a new person to replace Governor William Allen and they are going to make that decision soon.
Hearings are January 21 and January 28. If you can’t send a letter, send an email. The committee is hearing testimony next week. With your help, we can win this one. If we can change our perception of history and change the future. Thanks for your help.
Committee members are:
Chair: Senator Mark Wagoner SD02@senate.state.oh.us 614-466-8060
Co Chair: Tom Letson district64@ohr.state.oh.us 614-466-5358
Rep.RichardAdams district79@ohr.state.oh.us 614-4668114
Rep. Tyrone Yates district33@ohr.state.oh.us 614-466-1308
Senator Teresa FedorSD11@mail.sen.state.oh.us 614-466-5204
Senator Karen Gillmor SD26@senate.state.oh.us 614-466-8049
SNAIL MAIL LETTERS ARE BEST – since they will be distributed to the committee and some will be read from the house floor. Please send snail mail letters to both: Senator Mark Wagoner, Ohio State House, Senate Building Room #129, 1 Capitol Square, Columbus, Ohio 43215 and Representative Tom Letson, Ohio State House, 1 Capitol Square, Columbus, Ohio 43215.
If you would like to help with this project, please contact: DrLynetteLong@aol.com.
Dealer File PhotographDr. Zelma George in April 1986.Connie Schultz
Harriet Beecher Stowe is certainly a great choice. so I would support a push for her. another one of my favorites although probably a long shot is Virginia Woodhull who run for president (I believe she was the first to do so) of the United States long before women could vote. And then Lynette had sent this below article around about another great Ohioan woman Zelma Watson George. She would be a great replacement for governor Allen. so please write and call the state senators and let them know that there were great women in Ohio and that 9/100 for women in statuatory hall is an insult to our sex.
This article is by Connie Schultz, don’t know where it was published.
“For more than 100 years, two men have represented Ohio in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol in Washington.
They are James A. Garfield and Gov. William Allen, otherwise known as the President and Who?
Garfield is best known as the president with the second-shortest tenure in U.S. history. Less than four months in office, he was shot by a lawyer who apparently was more than a little disappointed not to have been named ambassador to France. Garfield died from infection 10 weeks later.
William Allen was once governor of Ohio. His bio from the Office of the Architect, which oversees Statuary Hall, reads: “He became an outspoken critic of Lincoln and was an anti-war Democrat.”
Turns out, it’s a little dicier than that.
Ohio’s National Statuary Collection Study Committee’s Web site reads: “The Ohio General Assembly decided that Allen’s pro-slavery position and outspoken criticism of President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War make him a poor representative for Ohio in the U.S. Capitol.”
Ya think?
Apparently it took only 124 years to decide that maybe it’s not such a great idea to have an icon of racial oppression representing our great state in the halls of Congress. Ohio’s General Assembly has appointed six of its own — three Republicans and three Democrats — to choose a new statue to replace Allen’s.
The person must be deceased and notable. So far, the committee is considering Thomas Edison, Tecumseh, Cincinnati Reds’ center fielder William Ellsworth “Dummy” Hoy, abolitionist James M. Ashley, Jesse Owens and Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes.
Which brings me to my nominee: Zelma Watson George.
Astute readers will note that one of the differences between George and the others mentioned is gender. Of the 100 statues residing in the hall, only nine depict women. The most recent, Helen Keller, was added by Alabama just this year.
Ohioans have many reasons to champion Zelma George. She had several careers because she had lots of interests and a disdain for obstacles. As she said to me in an 1990 interview at age 86, “I really was many minorities growing up: I was a woman. I was black. I was fat. I was ambitious.”
George attended the University of Chicago but was not allowed to live in its all-white dormitories. After earning her master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology at New York University, she became a distinguished scholar of black music. She was just getting started.
In 1950, she was the first black woman to take a “white role” on Broadway, starring as spiritualist Madame Flora in Gian Carlo Menotti’s folk opera “The Medium.” The famous cartoonist Al Hirschfeld depicted George sitting onstage in a wheelchair, her cane poised over the head of a man wincing in fear.
In 1960, George was the only African-American appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. In the late 1960s, she headed up Cleveland’s Job Corps, the oldest such center for young women in the country.
George was also a civil rights activist. Regular houseguests at her home on East 81st Street included Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Langston Hughes. She and her husband, Clayborne, a Cleveland lawyer and prominent Republican, took on racism as a team — often one restaurant at a time.
They were regulars at the Hanna Theatre, where they were forced to sit in the balcony. Afterward, they would head out to eat. Her husband’s standard question was, “Do you feel like fighting the race thing tonight?”
Unless they were exhausted, the answer was yes, and they’d go to a restaurant they knew would refuse to serve them because they were black. They’d ask for the manager, get the names of witnesses, and then Clayborne would file another lawsuit.
In 1960, the State Department sent George on a lecture tour around the world as a “good will ambassador.” She continued to be a popular speaker well into her 80s.
She loved to make an entrance, and was never shy about her size. When she was named the first black Miss America judge, the well-endowed George told reporters she was also the first “size-44 judge.” She relished an audience’s gasps at the sight of her.
“When you do something big women aren’t supposed to do, you do it up right,” she said, “really making something of it.”
It’s time Ohio made something really big of Zelma Watson George.”
there was an article about candidates for statuatory hall by Laura Bishoff in the dayton daily news. hardly any women represented and not one of my favorites presented above V, Woodhull,Harriet Beecher Stow and Zelma George. suggest mailing to Laura Bishoff with names she does not know may be a good idea and may bring another article in the Ohio newspaper.
E-mail Laura A. Bischoff at lbischoff@daytondailynews.com
Call Laura A. Bischoff at (614) 224-1624
here short info about Victoria Woodhull from Wikipedia
Victoria (Claflin) Woodhull
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright
Victoria (Claflin) Woodhull 1838-1927, and Tennessee Claflin, 1846-1923, American journalists and lecturers, b. Ohio, sisters noted for their beauty and wildly eccentric behavior. As children they traveled throughout Ohio with their parents, giving spiritualist demonstrations. At 15, Victoria married Dr. Canning Woodhull but continued to tour as a clairvoyant with Tennessee. Victoria divorced Woodhull in 1864 and two years later probably married Col. James Blood (there is doubt as to the validity of the marriage). Tennessee married John Bartels but retained her maiden name. In New York City after 1868, the sisters were backed in a brokerage venture by Cornelius Vanderbilt , who was interested in spiritualism. In 1870, Victoria and Tennessee, with the financial support of Col. Blood, became proprietors of Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, a sensational journal that took stands in
…
Read entire entry
Victoria (Claflin) Woodhull 1838-1927, and Tennessee Claflin, 1846-1923, American journalists and lecturers, b. Ohio, sisters noted for their beauty and wildly eccentric behavior. As children they traveled throughout Ohio with their parents, giving spiritualist demonstrations. At 15, Victoria married Dr. Canning Woodhull but continued to tour as a clairvoyant with Tennessee. Victoria divorced Woodhull in 1864 and two years later probably married Col. James Blood (there is doubt as to the validity of the marriage). Tennessee married John Bartels but retained her maiden name. In New York City after 1868, the sisters were backed in a brokerage venture by Cornelius Vanderbilt , who was interested in spiritualism. In 1870, Victoria and Tennessee, with the financial support of Col. Blood, became proprietors of Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, a sensational journal that took stands in favor of woman suffrage, free love, and socialism. In 1872 the paper reported rumors of a love affair between Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and the wife of Theodore Tilton , which provoked a national scandal. Also in 1872, the journal published the first English translation of The Communist Manifesto. In the same year Victoria became the first woman candidate for president, running on the People’s party ticket with Frederick Douglass as her running mate. The two sisters moved to England in 1877. Victoria, having divorced Blood, married John Biddulph Martin, a wealthy banker. Tennessee, also divorced, married Francis Cook, an English art collector who became a baronet in 1886. Both women became well-known philanthropists.
Bibliography: See biographies by J. Johnston (1967) and M. M. Marberry (1967); B. Goldsmith, Other Powers (1998); M. Gabriel, Notorious Victoria (1998).
Amy and to all from Ohio,
I just spoke with a legislative assistant in Senator Teresa Fedor’s office. I was told that any nomination had to be supported by someone willing to testify on their behalf. These testimonials are going to begin next week into the next. Perhaps, Cynthia Ruccia, who I believe lives in Ohio could stand up for one of these women being nomninated…or maybe, Cynthia can find someone who can. Otherwise, chances are the next statue will be of another man!
Leave your Response Want an avatar? Get a gravatar!
Community Room
February 22, 2012 at 11:22 am
February 17, 2012 at 2:39 pm
February 6, 2012 at 4:25 pm
January 30, 2012 at 2:36 pm
January 26, 2012 at 4:38 pm
January 23, 2012 at 1:04 pm
January 15, 2012 at 11:37 am
January 9, 2012 at 6:36 pm
BUILD your NETWORK
Our Network of College Women
Protecting our Teenage Girls
We’re in the Media »
Click to see our latest stories in the media
More Stories »Recent Comments
The Latest from our Blog
Archives
Pioneer Mentors
Blogroll
Find us Online
Subscribe Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)
The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...