Photos by Paula Levine

The statue, officially named "The Portrait Monument," is of Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the uncarved portion represents all past, present, and future women leaders. It was presented to Congress by the National Woman's Party as a gift to the nation on February, 15, 1921, and placed in the Rotunda Hall of the Capitol. After one day the Italian Carerra marble statue, sculpted by Adelaide Johnson, was moved to the basement. Finally, after 76 years the "Woman Suffrage Statue" was moved from the basement to the Rotunda of the United States Capitol over Mother's Day week-end, May 10-12, 1997.

The monument consists of three parts, the 14,000-pound sculpture itself and two rectangular stone base slabs. The black Belgian marble base and the white Carrara marble base were donated by Adelaide Johnson in 1925. However, the black marble base arrived broken and was not replaced by the artist until 1929. In 1930 both pieces were installed, completing the artist's design. The total weight of the monument and its two bases is estimated to be 26,000 pounds.

According to the Architect of the Capitol, Office of the Curator, the inscription stenciled on the monument when it was first delivered to the Capitol is as follows:

"The three great destiny characters of the world whose spiritual import and historical significance transcend that of all others of any country or age.

Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the call of that first Woman's Rights Convention of 1848 initiated and Susan B. Anthony marshalling the latent forces through three generations down more than a half century of time guided the only fundamental universal uprising on our planet.

The Woman's Revolution.

Principle not policy. Justice not favor. Men their rights and nothing more, Women their rights and nothing less, was the clarion call to the most astounding upheaval of all time. A call which waked the world, signaled and inaugurated a revolution without tradition or precedent, and proclaimed the first incontrovertible concept of human freedom - that of individual liberty - personal responsibility, including women.

Woman, first denied a soul, then called mindless, now arisen declared herself an entity to be reckoned.

This mightiest of revolutions encircling the globe accomplishing without bloodshed the overthrow of entrenched dogma and hoary bigotries reached to the farthermost roots of being.

Here indeed was the first, the only impeachable demand for right as might ever made.

Spiritually the Woman Movement is the all-enfolding one.

It represents the Emancipation of Womanhood.

The release of the Feminine Principal in humanity.

The moral integration of human evolution come to rescue torn and struggling humanity from its savage self.

Historically these three stand unique and peerless."