{"id":7546,"date":"2025-03-21T18:35:21","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T18:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/new-york-poised-to-place-harriet-tubman-in-us-capitol\/"},"modified":"2025-03-21T18:35:21","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T18:35:21","slug":"new-york-poised-to-place-harriet-tubman-in-us-capitol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/new-york-poised-to-place-harriet-tubman-in-us-capitol\/","title":{"rendered":"New York poised to place Harriet Tubman in US Capitol"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

ALBANY, New York \u2014 Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s lifelong obsession with Harriet Tubman is propelling an effort to place a statue of the 19th century abolitionist in the U.S. Capitol.<\/p>\n

The push to put Tubman\u2019s marble likeness in the Capitol\u2019s Statuary Hall is also being backed by both the state Senate and Assembly, which support the governor\u2019s plan to swap out a statue of founding father Robert Livingston.<\/p>\n

There are 100 statues in Statuary Hall \u2014 two for each state. The planned switch to Tubman would be the first change in one of New York\u2019s spots since the likenesses of Livingston and George Clinton were shipped to Washington in the 1870s.<\/p>\n

Hochul has been as big a booster of Tubman as anybody. Last year, she told a group of elementary school students about her childhood fascination with the Union Army spy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was in third grade, I had this one favorite book. It was called \u2018The Story of Harriet Tubman,\u2019\u201d Hochul said. \u201cIt was a book I used to check out of the library all the time. I didn\u2019t own it. I checked it out so much, the librarian one day said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you just keep it?\u2019 And what I\u2019d do is, late at night, my parents said, \u2018Turn the lights out,\u2019 it was dark in my room, I crept out of bed and I\u2019d go grab that book. And I read it over and over and over because I could not get over how courageous she was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Gov.<\/p>\n

Seventeen statutes have been removed from Statuary Hall since 2003, most of whom were Confederates or their sympathizers. Democrats in the House have twice passed a bill in recent years to ban such statues. And while this has yet to win approval from the Senate, other efforts to remove sculptures that have faced criticism have been successful \u2014 including North Carolina\u2019s Republican-backed push to replace segregationist Charles Brantley Aycock with Billy Graham<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

Hochul has made at least four official visits to Tubman\u2019s historic home in Auburn since she became lieutenant governor a decade ago. She renamed one of the boats<\/a> the state uses on the Erie Canal after Tubman in 2022. And she announced in 2023<\/a> that the state would spend $400,000 to add a Tubman statute to Binghamton \u2014 which is set to be unveiled this Friday.<\/p>\n

Livingston spent 24 years as New York\u2019s first chancellor \u2014 a post that made him the top judge in the state, but which also had some powers currently held by the governor. His tenure overlapped with a stint as the first American to hold the job that evolved into secretary of state. He later served as Thomas Jefferson\u2019s ambassador to France and negotiated the Louisiana Purchase.<\/p>\n

But his historical standing has been marred by the fact that he owned more than a dozen slaves.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Livingston was never a consensus choice for a statue. As the Legislature began debating the honorees in 1872<\/a>, steamboat inventor Robert Fulton seemed like the early frontrunner to join Clinton.<\/p>\n

Hochul\u2019s proposal, which was buried in her budget and has since been included in both chamber\u2019s one-house budget bills, would create a five-member commission tasked with selecting a Tubman statute. The governor would then be tasked with working with the Architect of the Capitol to finalize plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the architects of the Underground Railroad, one of the folks who has redefined who we are as a human,\u201d said Sen. Jamaal Bailey \u2014 who\u2019s sponsoring a bill to make Harriet Tubman Day a state holiday \u2014 about why the abolitionist is deserving of the historical honor.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a human perspective, not just a Black perspective \u2014 and I think it\u2019s great, as a Black person in New York state, for her to have this recognition \u2014 I think it\u2019s very important for us to do,\u201d Bailey said.<\/p>\n

While Livingston might be removed from Washington, his likeness will live on. Two exact replicas were made when his statue was finalized in 1875. One of them still stands prominently at the western end of the state Senate\u2019s lobby in New York\u2019s Capitol building.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ALBANY, New York \u2014 Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s lifelong obsession with Harriet Tubman is propelling an effort to place a statue of the 19th century abolitionist in the U.S. Capitol. The push to put Tubman\u2019s marble likeness in the Capitol\u2019s Statuary Hall is also being backed by both the state Senate and Assembly, which support the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}