National Women's History Museum

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KAPTUR. Thank you. It is just great to be here this evening and to have so many women gathered on the floor--women Members. That in itself is historic.

As an Ohio Representative, I want to voice my support of your bill, H.R. 863, the National Women's History Commission Act, to study the potential creation of a National Women's History Museum in Washington, D.C., on our mall of democracy, our Nation's Mall.

I can't thank Carolyn Maloney of New York and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee more on behalf of the people whom I represent. The part of Ohio that I come from has really been the leading region of our State to elevate women to public life. I will enter some of that in the Record this evening, but in a personal way, let me say that, when I first got here in the 1980s, there were 24 women who were serving in the House.

A dear, dear Member from Louisiana, Congresswoman Lindy Boggs, took me and shepherded me through those rather unusual days. I can remember finally being elected to the Appropriations Committee. When I walked in, there were only the two of us. Virginia Smith from Nebraska was there. Virginia was a Republican. That was it. And me. It was just a different experience. It was like you ended up in heaven and you just saw who was there for the first time.

Over the years, I befriended many people. In 1995, I wrote a book about the women of Congress. I thought it would be easy. But what I found so difficult was, where were the primary materials? I ended up spending more time doing research on women who had served up to that point. I thought, Wow, this is really a huge vacuum.

I drove up to Maine to interview then retired-Senator Margaret Chase Smith. I recorded her. She had created next to her home a tiny little museum where she had some of her papers, and I thought, Oh, my gosh, there really isn't any place for this nationally, and yet this is such a significant person--the first woman to have served both in the House and the Senate.

So as I got into that book, I realized how these materials were all over the country and not really well gathered at all. Then, one of the women from our State, Mary Regula, who was married to former Congressman Ralph Regula of Ohio, worked for years to build the National First Ladies Museum in Canton, Ohio. I went there for the dedication. I am on the board. I saw how Mary and Ralph fought for that for years. It should have been so easy, but it was so hard.

As you go through that particular museum and you start reading the lives of the First Ladies, you are actually shocked to read what really happened and the materials that have been brought together. It was proof to me that the history of women really is yet to be recorded.

So I came down here tonight to compliment you on your efforts and to say that in the region that I come from, we have now seen women rise to positions of heading universities and major corporations. Obviously, women are the anchors for their families and communities in so many ways. They are physicians, engineers, attorneys, judges, athletes, Justices of our Supreme Court. Janet Yellen is now the first woman to head the Federal Reserve of our country. Finally, maybe she will straighten things out.

They are military personnel and legislators. They are career paths that had once been blocked or not even considered for women.

I wanted to come down here this evening and say I stand with you.

I am dedicating my remarks tonight in honor of a constituent of my own district, Mrs. Mattie McAlister, who has just celebrated her 90th birthday. Even as she begins her tenth decade of life, she maintains a full schedule. She is a grandma to all. She teaches children--and she has for years--full time at the Grace Community Center in the heart of our community of Toledo.

The lessons she has learned in her own life are passed on to new generations as the children learn through example. Mrs. McAlister maintains an active social life as well and is involved civic and church life. Throughout her life she has never hesitated to be involved serving her family, church, and community with dignity and grace.

She deserves to be honored in this Women's History Month because she is, fundamentally, a teacher. No child that walks by her doesn't learn. All these years that she has technically been retired, she still teaches in a community that is most in need of her shepherding ways and her incredible gifts as a teacher.

So I want to compliment both of you for allowing the American people to record the history of over half of our citizenry in a way that brings them into full view.

I can guarantee you that you have begun a project that is going to take the rest of your lives to complete. It is a mammoth undertaking, and one that certainly deserves our attention here in the Congress. How great to be living in this great moment in history where we can actually make it a reality.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank Congresswoman Blackburn so much and Congresswoman Maloney. I share the same passion as Congresswoman Lummis. We want to just lift you and be a part of this team for H.R. 863. We hope that everyone listening this evening will cosponsor this important legislation.

As I listened to you talk, I thought I would give some background, having lived through it here. You talk about museums, Congresswoman Maloney, and you go around the Capitol itself, it is a museum, and you go: This doesn't look like America.

For three decades, we have been trying to hang portraits of women who chaired committees in this institution, and it has been a herculean struggle. We finally rehung a portrait in the Education and the Workforce Committee for Mary Norton, who chaired that committee. She wrote some of the most important legislation in this country and was the first woman ever to chair that committee. They had her portrait in a closet--in a closet--just like these statues of suffragettes had to be brought up into the main Capitol.

When I first arrived in Congress, there were only the statues. There was the portrait of Pocahontas in the main room, and then the statue on the very top, Liberty, on the top of the Capitol. But as you looked at the other portraits, you never saw women. Well, Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio, who headed House Administration many years ago, heard our plea and he finally arranged to have Jeannette Rankin, a Republican and progressive from Montana, but it took us until the 21st century to do it. She was actually elected before the 19th Amendment was passed to the Constitution. She came from Montana, and we didn't even have her portrait in the Capitol hung.

In addition, Shirley Chisholm of New York, she is now hung on the first floor. She was the first woman of color to run for President of the United States.

The lack of their presence to me is just so blatant, and that is why I want to thank both of you marvelous, marvelous Members and women for seeing this gap in American history.

Even the Women's Room in the Capitol is behind closed doors so the general public doesn't always see the women. It is very interesting. I think we are about to open another door and allow the fullness of American history to come forward.

I would like to place in the Record the names of citizens from northern Ohio:

Toledo's Geraldine Macelwane, appointed the first woman on the Lucas County Common Pleas bench. She won election for four consecutive terms;

Julia Bates, our current county prosecutor in Lucas County, Ohio, and Ohio Supreme Court Justices Alice Robie Resnick and Maureen O'Connor, the only two women ever in American history to be elected to the supreme court of our State;

In northern Ohio, we have sent many fine women. Obviously, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, who serves with us now, and Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones before her, the first two African American women ever elected to Congress from the State of Ohio, now joined by Joyce Beatty of Columbus; Mary Rose Okar; and State legislators Nina Turner, Capri Cafaro, Shirley Smith, Nikki Antonio, Nan Baker, Sandra Williams, Barbara Boyd, Theresa Fedor Edna Brown, Linda Furney and Marijean Valiquette, all women who were trailblazers on the political front.

Toledo has had a woman mayor, Donna Owens. Tina Skeldon Wozniak is a Lucas county commissioner; and Anita Lopez, our county auditor.

Sister Ann Francis Klimkowski was the founding president of Lourdes University, and all of the sisters, the Roman Catholic sisters--the Franciscans, the Sisters of Notre Dame, the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of St. Joseph, and the Ursuline Sisters who served selflessly across this country in hospitals and schools and gave themselves to their communities almost unrecognized. There was a traveling display of them that finally went around the country, and I hope that becomes a part of this museum. They gave their lives for us.

All of those women helped build us and on whose shoulders we are standing, and, as with Congresswoman Lummis, I just wish to place in the Record--when I was young, I thought I would go to the Air Force Academy, and when I sent my letter in and was rejected because I was a woman, I didn't really completely put it together in my mind. I just tried to do something else, and so I applied to Notre Dame University, and was rejected because I was a woman. They didn't allow women to be students there in those days. And then finally to the FBI. I thought it would be great to work for my country. I would be a female Elliot Ness. And, of course, I was rejected because a woman.

So another door always opened, but in the area in which I grew up, it wasn't possible.

Finally, let me say in memory of our mother, who was never able to obtain her degrees until after she retired. She had a very hard life, and received her high school degree after she went on Social Security. One of her very first jobs was working in a restaurant where, when the minimum wage went into effect her boss, who was an animal, basically cashed the check with the additional amount in it, and then he kept the difference. We didn't have enforcement at the Department of Labor. So each of us have stories about what happened in our lives, and they deserve recording in a museum for the women of America.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source