Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1980, the Smithsonian Women's History Museum Act. On March 31, 1776, future First Lady Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, urging him and the other members of the Continental Congress to ``remember the ladies'' when fighting for America's independence from Great Britain and drafting a new form of government. Unfortunately, despite this nation's great history, we were slow to take Abigail Adams' advice to heart. It took 144 years to grant women the right to vote, an historic event I talked about a week ago in a floor speech commemorating the 100th anniversary of New Jersey's ratification of the 19th Amendment. Even this Congress has downplayed the contributions of women in history as evidenced by the treatment of Portrait Monument, the statue in the Capitol of the three greatest leaders of the suffrage movement, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The Portrait Monument was unveiled with great fanfare in 1921 shortly after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, but for decades it was relegated to an isolated area of the Crypt without a plaque explaining the contributions of the three women or a description of the female artist who sculpted it. For decades, Congress cited the cost of moving the statue as reason enough for keeping it in the Crypt.…”