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A statue of educator and civil rights advocate Mary McLeod Bethune will be displayed in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall in 2022 — marking the first time a Black person has been honored with a figure in the collection of tributes.
Bethune’s 11-foot tall state-commissioned statue will replace one currently in Statuary Hall of Confederate general Edmund Kirby. The marble figure of the educator weighs over 6,000 pounds and was “sculpted out of the largest (and last) piece of statuary marble from Michelangelo’s quarry in Italy,” NPR reported
The artist behind the sculpture, Nilda Comas, was selected out of 1,600 applicants and is “the first Hispanic master sculptor to create a statue for the National Statuary Hall State Collection.”
Bethune’s tribute is currently on display in Daytona Beach, Florida for public viewing and will reside there until the end of this year before making its way to the nation’s capital.
Thoughtfully crafted, the work of art depicts Bethune donning a pearl necklace and dressed in cap and gown while holding a black rose in one hand and a walking stick in the other as she stands in front of a stack of books and smiles.
She’s quoted as saying, “Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it may be a diamond in the rough,” in an inscription at the bottom of the piece.
The cap and gown highlight her work as an educator, whereas the books in front of her symbolize her dedication to furthering the education of women and people of color specifically.
The walking stick was a personal touch — as Bethune was an avid collector and saw them as “symbols of refinement and leadership” NPR detailed. The particular walking stick mimicked in the statue references a gift Bethune received from President Franklin D. Roosevelt with whom she advised closely as a part of his “Black Council” and served as the committee’s only female member.
The black rose in her other hand is said to be a nod to her beloved students, whom Bethune called her “black roses.”
While speaking with local news source WESH2, Comas said, “I just fell in love with Dr. Bethune and everything that she did.”
Born on July 10, 1875, near Maysville, South Carolina, Bethune was one of the younger children out of Samuel and Patsy McLeod’s seventeen kids. Her parents were formerly enslaved and following the Civil War, Bethune’s mother continued working in the field until she could buy the land where her family picked cotton.
Bethune could pick “250 pounds of cotton a day” by the age of nine years old, according to Women’s History.
She graduated from a boarding school called the Scotia Seminary in North Carolina in 1894, and later attended Dwight Moody’s Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago. Since no church was willing to sponsor her aspirations of being a missionary, Bethune went into teaching.
She later married fellow educator Albertus Bethune in South Carolina, and the couple had a son in 1899.
After moving to Florida and her marriage ending, Bethune opened the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls in 1904, to support her son. Once the institute grew and transformed into a college, it later merged with “the all-male Cookman Institute to form Bethune-Cookman College in 1929.”
More than an impactful educator and civil rights activist, Bethune is recognized as a womanist and philanthropist as well. Founding the National Council of Negro Women and advising several U.S. presidents are just two of the many achievements she accomplished within her lifetime.
She became the vice president of the NAACP in 1940, and held that position till she died on May 18, 1955. In Florida, she’s particularly remembered as a businesswoman “who co-owned a Daytona, Florida resort and co-founded the Central Life Insurance Company of Tampa.”
“Dr. Bethune embodies the very best of the Sunshine State. Floridians and all Americans can take great pride in being represented by the great educator and civil rights icon,” Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor said in a statement released last month. “I am glad that she is being rightfully recognized here in Florida before she travels to her place of honor and recognition by all of America in the U.S. Capitol.”
Notably, the new statue will be the second historic figure Bethune holds in Washington, D.C.
To read more about fellow civil rights leader Dorothy Height’s involvement in getting Bethune’s first statue on federal land, click here.
