With the stroke of a pen, President George W. Bush signed legislation on Thursday requiring that a statue of Sojourner Truth be erected in to the United States Capitol.
The historic move came after U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and U.S Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., authored legislation for the creation of the monument to honor the woman who spent much of her life preaching for the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage
“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,” said Clinton, who was surrounded at a press conference in Washington, D.C., by prominent women activists including Dorothy Height, chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women, and award-winning actress Cicely Tyson.
