The Unveiling Ceremony
February 15, 1921

In his acceptance speech, Speaker of the House Frederick H. Gillett said the event marked the “triumphant end of a long and sometimes heated controversy.”

Though Gillett was gracious in his acceptance of the monument, the emphasis of his speech was that the “great struggle” for women’s rights was “settled forever” and it was time to move forward.

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In its deepest significance, the monument “must always be symbolic of the fact that women have at last been recognized as human beings,” said Sara Bard Field, “and that they are a necessary factor in human progress.”



"The very first Suffrage Association was called the American Equal Rights Association and its object was to enfranchise the negro as well as the woman.... We therefore wish to broaden our Woman's Rights platform and make it in name what it has ever been in spirit, a human rights' platform."

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"Although we have taken the likenesses of three prominent women for this memorial, nevertheless in its deepest significance it is a monument to women past, present and to come…

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THE PIONEERS

Upon this marble bust that is not I
Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame;
But in the forum of my silenced cry
Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame.
. . .
 
---Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1923
 

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This monument was not made for entertainment,

but as an immortal record of the mightiest thing in the evolution of humanity.

                                                                                                                                 --Adelaide Johnson

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ALICE PAUL

At the end of 1922, Alice Paul proclaimed, “It will not require one hundred years to elect a woman President of the United States. Before 2023 I think we shall see a woman in the White House as chief executive of the nation and women will comprise half of the membership of Congress.”

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