National Women's History Museum Act of 2003

NATIONAL WOMEN'S HISTORY MUSEUM ACT OF 2003

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I now ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with the Senator from Alaska, and I yield to the Senator from Alaska for that purpose.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today and engage in this colloquy with the Senator from Maine. I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to speak about opening a National Women's History Museum near the National Mall.

Currently, the National Women's History Museum is without a home. It is accessible online, but Americans need a physical location for the National Women's History Museum so a history from every State can be collected, viewed, and analyzed.

Recognizing the Senator from Maine and this Senator from Alaska have a connection, both of us coming from Northern States, both of us coming from States with populations that are relatively small, both States have a history that demonstrates a history of pioneering women. Alaska and Maine have historically afforded opportunities that might not be available to women in other States.

Throughout Alaska's and Maine's history, women have had perhaps more opportunities because our populations are isolated, and you are forced to be a little more self-reliant.

Women of Alaska and Maine, as their male counterparts, are ingrained with the ability to make do with what we have. I ask the Senator from Maine if she would agree with some of my statements?

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I certainly do agree with the distinguished Senator from Alaska. Both of us have had the opportunity to serve in public office. Both of us come from States that are small in population but large in the impact that women have had on our Nation's history. We are from States with rich histories of accomplishments by women of all backgrounds and cultures.

For example, the legendary Senator Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman in history to serve in both the U.S. House and the Senate.

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, who has been called the dean of African-American Women Writers, and who has been considered one of the most prolific black female writers in the beginning of the 1900s, was born in Portland, ME.

Mary Gabriel, of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, was a famous Native-American basket weaver, largely credited with reviving the art in the State of Maine.

Brenda Commander is the first woman to be elected as chief of Maine's Maliseet Indian Tribe.

Is the Senator from Alaska aware of similar accomplishments by Alaskan women?

Ms. MURKOWSKI. We have a history, as I have said, of pioneering women, women who perhaps have done the unexpected, who have reached out into areas that we would not anticipate, at a time we would not anticipate, women such as Kate Carmack, who is especially important in Alaska's history. Kate was an Athabascan woman who married an American trader. She is actually credited with discovering the first gold in Bonanza Creek, which started the Alaska gold rush in 1896.

As the story is told, when Kate first discovered the gold, it was frozen in the mud. Kate and her husband did not have the grub stake, if you will. They did not have the cash necessary to do the digout that winter. So they literally were sitting on the largest gold discovery in history. Kate's resourcefulness as a skin sower and her skill as an outdoorsman earned enough cash for the family to pull together that grub stake to hit "pay dirt" when the ground thawed the next spring.

When we think of women like Kate Carmack in Alaska, who braved some pretty tough, some pretty difficult conditions, I ask the Senator from Maine if she has any similar stories from her State?

Ms. COLLINS. I certainly do. That is a wonderful story of a truly courageous woman.

We have many women such as that throughout Maine's history. Josephine Peary was one such woman. She was married to the great explorer, Robert E. Peary, who was the first to reach the North Pole, not that far from Alaska. They lived together on Eagle Island in Casco Bay, ME. Josephine began exploring when she accompanied her husband to Greenland on a journey sponsored by the Academy of Natural Sciences that would last for a year and a half. That travel, in 1892, made Josephine the first woman in history to be a member of an Arctic exploration team.

I understand that women in Alaska also have been pioneers in expanding opportunities for women to work outside of the home. I wonder if the Senator from Alaska might expand on that.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. We have a lot of firsts that, again, when we look at Alaska's history and recognize we did not become a State until 1959, it is a very recent history, but yet women's involvement in some very important firsts have gone back so many years prior to statehood it really gets your attention.

Historically, Alaskan women were employed in jobs that women in other areas of the country could only dream about. In 1915, Anchorage employed its first female principal in the Anchorage School District, our largest community now, 3 years before World War I and 5 years before women's suffrage was ratified.

A year later, 1916, and still 4 years before national women's suffrage passed, Lena Morrow Lewis is believed to be the first woman to campaign for Alaska's territorial seat in the U.S. Congress. She did not win, but she was certainly followed by other pioneering women in the workforce.

Marvel Crosson was the first female licensed pilot in Alaska in 1927. Mildred Herman became the first woman admitted to the Alaska Bar Association in 1934. And Barbara Washburn was the first woman to climb Mount McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America.

This is all long before Alaska became a State. Other opportunities for women, as we flip through the history books, become very apparent. A woman by the name of Nell Scott became the first woman to serve in the Alaska State legislature in 1937. This was a year before the National Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was passed, which established a minimum wage.

Blanche McSmith was the first Black woman to serve in the Alaska State legislature. Sadie Neakok was the first Native Alaskan woman to serve as a magistrate in Alaska in 1960, during the same time period when the struggle for civil rights was raging in the South. Blanche and Sadie began serving in Alaska in very prominent roles 4 years before the Civil Rights Act was passed.

Could the Senator from Maine describe for me some of the pioneering women in her State.

Ms. COLLINS. I would love to share that information with the Senator from Alaska. It is just fascinating to hear the many firsts that women from her State have established.

The Senator from Alaska obviously has a great deal of pride in the history of women in her State.

In Maine, too, we have women who have played influential roles throughout history, but especially in the field of literature.

I am sure all of my colleagues know well the story of Harriet Beecher. She wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1850 while pregnant with her seventh child. She began writing the book while residing in Brunswick, ME. Her deep religious faith and dedication to bringing to light the problems with slavery encouraged "Hattie" to write with such passion that she quickly finished and continued to write an average of a book a year to support her family.

Another famous Mainer, Martha Ballard, also made important contributions. She lived in Hallowell, ME, and was a midwife and a healer. She faithfully maintained a diary from 1785 to 1812, and her meticulous records have provided us with a rare glimpse into the daily life in Maine in the late 1700s and the early 1800s. Her contributions and life were only recently highlighted when Laurel Ulrich documented her work in a Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Midwife's Tale."

America's first female novelist, Sally Sayward Barrell, also known as Madam Wood, was born in York, ME, in the southern tip of our State. She wrote five gothic novels, first under the signature of "A Lady of Massachusetts," and then, later, under the signature of "A Lady of Maine" when Maine was granted statehood in 1820.

Another pioneering woman was Dorothea Dix. She was born in Hampden, ME, in 1802, and is considered a groundbreaking reformer in the area of treatment for individuals suffering from mental illness. She traveled the Nation advocating for a more compassionate, holistic approach to the treatment of those suffering from mental illness. She was truly ahead of her time. She also successfully lobbied Congress to establish the first and only national Federal mental health facility which would become a world premiere mental health and research center.

I ask my colleague to further expand on how Alaska has supported women and their accomplishments.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Well, as the Senator has noted, her home State of Maine and Alaska both have a very rich history of groundbreaking women, women who have been pioneers, women who have reached out. I think our States have demonstrated the very supportive nature of moving women forward in their prosperity.

In Alaska, as a for instance, since we are talking about "for instances and firsts," the very first bill ever passed by the Territory of Alaska was the Shoup women's suffrage bill in 1913.

That was our first bill as it related to women's rights. Seven years before women's suffrage was ratified in the rest of the country and 46 years before Alaska became a State, our territorial legislature's first bill was related to women's rights.

I ask the Senator from Maine, in terms of your role model throughout your political career, who would you cite as that role model, that individual?

Ms. COLLINS. I would reply to my friend and colleague from Alaska that my role model and inspiration was the great Senator Margaret Chase Smith. She served as Senator from Maine the entire time I was growing up. She served in the Senate from 1949 to 1972. I realize how fortunate I was to have as a role model this courageous, smart, and brave woman who did so much and set so many firsts for America. I have often thought that the path for my colleague Olympia Snowe and myself to the Senate was paved by the remarkable Senator Margaret Chase Smith.

I remember well my very first meeting with Senator Smith. I was a senior in high school. I was in Washington for a special program, and she spent nearly 2 hours talking with me. She talked about national defense, her service on the Armed Services Committee and, most of all, about her decision to speak out against the excesses of Joseph McCarthy. That was an extraordinarily brave thing to do, but it was typical of Senator Smith, who had a courageous and independent spirit.

She was the first to do so many things. She was the first Republican Senator elected to the Senate. I would note that when I was elected to the Senate, Maine became the first State to send two Republican women to the Senate to serve at the same time. She was the first woman to serve in both the House and the Senate. She was the first woman to be backed by a major political party in a Presidential election. Long after it became commonplace for women to serve in the highest ranks of our Government, Senator Smith will always be acknowledged and remembered and honored in Maine for her dignity and her courage.

Although I didn't realize it at the time, when I look back at her meeting with me, I realize that that was the first step in a journey that led me to run for her seat 25 years later. I am so proud to hold the seat once held by the legendary Senator Margaret Chase Smith.

Women such as those the Senator from Alaska has spoken of and whom I have talked about today are the reason we are so proud to sponsor a bill that, at no cost to the taxpayers, directs that the Old Post Office Annex be made available to house the National Women's History Museum. We need a place for our country to honor the contributions of women, particularly for young girls who are coming to Washington to be able to go to this museum and learn about some of the remarkable women who have changed American history, about whom the Senator from Alaska and I have talked today. Women's history needs a place in our capital and in our collective American history.

I ask my colleague from Alaska if she would agree with that sentiment. She has been such a leader in getting this bill through.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I couldn't agree more with the Senator from Maine. Just in the discussion we have had this evening about some of the women from my State and their pioneering enterprises and hearing the stories about the women of Maine, I would love to be able to go somewhere and spend the time to do more research, to find out more about these pioneering women, not only in Alaska and Maine but all of the States in between. By having the women's history museum here in Washington, DC, we will be able to do that.

Women have played such a crucial role in the development of my State, as you have heard, and certainly in the development of yours. By encouraging women's history of all of our respective States, we can see and celebrate this common history from as far apart as Maine to the east and Alaska in the west.

Those frontier women, women of independent spirit, demonstrated self-reliance, themes that embody all American women and the American spirit. I, too, am most proud to be a cosponsor of this bill and thank the Senator from Maine for her leadership in moving this forward so that we do have a place to house these great collections.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Alaska for participating in this discussion tonight. She certainly continues that proud tradition in Alaska of women who have made a real difference. I am honored to serve with her. She does an extraordinary job. I also think we would be remiss in not recognizing the contributions of our Presiding Officer today, the Senator from North Carolina, Mrs. Dole, who also has established so many firsts in American history. I know that she, too, will be prominently featured in this museum once it comes about.

I think we can take great pride in being here tonight and knowing we have passed this legislation unanimously.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.