Maryland! Put Harriet Tubman in Statuary Hall!

Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) was one of the all-time great American heroes. Born a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, she became one of the most daring conductors on the Underground Railroad, personally leading dozens of fugitive slaves to freedom. Cool, resourceful, and enormously brave, she “never lost a passenger.”

EVE’s Maryland Statue Project is committed to putting Harriet Tubman in National Statuary Hall. She would be the first African-American woman in the Hall, as well as the first enslaved person. Her commemoration would represent a great step forward for our nation, and her statue would stand as a beacon of inspiration for the millions of Americans who visit Statuary Hall each year.

Since each statue in National Statuary Hall is the gift of a state, the Maryland State Legislature must pass a resolution expressing its intention to place a statue of Harriet Tubman in the Hall. The resolution must also identify which of Maryland’s two existing statues is to be replaced (see below), and how funding for the new statue will be obtained.

We are coordinating this project with the Maryland chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and are actively inviting other groups in Maryland and connected to Harriet Tubman to join with us. Please contact our president, Dr. Lynette Long, at president@equalvisibilityeverywhere.org for more information.

About Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, in about 1820. In 1849 she fled north to freedom, where she joined the secret network of free African-Americans and white sympathizers who helped runaways escape—the Underground Railroad. She became a conductor on the Railroad, risking her life time and time again to return to Maryland and lead slaves to freedom. Known as “the Moses of her people,” she was so successful that furious slaveholders put a huge price on her head.

When the Civil War began, Tubman became a Union spy, organizing an espionage network of slaves and freedmen who operated behind Confederate lines. On several occasions she led military raiding parties, and also tended the Union wounded as an army nurse. After the war she devoted herself to women’s suffrage, the care of orphans and invalids, and the establishment of freedmen’s schools in the South.

Replacing one of Maryland’s existing statues

Maryland is represented in Statuary Hall by Charles Carroll (1737-1832) and John Hanson (1715-1783). Both statues are eligible for replacement according to the rules established by Congress in 2000 (which require a statue to have been on display for at least 10 years before being replaced).

Charles Carroll was a delegate to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A wealthy Maryland planter, Carroll was considered the largest slaveholder in the American colonies at the time of the Revolution, owning between 400 and 500 people. He supported the gradual abolition of slavery (though he never freed his own slaves) and the resettlement of former slaves in Africa. From 1828 to 1831 he served as the president of the Maryland branch of the American Colonization Society, which founded Liberia. The statue of Charles Carroll was placed in Statuary Hall in 1903.

John Hanson was a Maryland merchant and delegate to the Continental Congress. From 1781 to 1782 he served as “President of the United States in Congress Assembled” under the Articles of Confederation. This was largely a ceremonial role, and after a one-year term Hanson retired to the country, where he died in 1783. More than a hundred years later, one of his descendants began promoting the idea that Hanson’s role in presiding over Congress meant that he had really been the first “President of the United States.” Modern historians discount the claim, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was very popular in Maryland. It is the probable reason Hanson was chosen in 1903 to be immortalized in Statuary Hall.

Download our two-page flyer about Harriet Tubman and National Statuary Hall (pdf): Tubman_NSH.pdf