Statuary Hall mystery partly answered

I presumed in an earlier post that Each state got to choose which of its citizens would represent it in Statuary Hall. That got me thinking. What were the politics behind Rosa Park’s being chosen for Alabama.

I’m not sure the Alabama State legislature had anything to do with it at all. Turns out the Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson authored the law that got the Congress to pay for a statue of Parks.

Recent news stories I’ve found suggest that some in Alabama think she should be simalarly honored in their state legislature. They were given the right to replace one of their two statutes six or so years ago. They had Helen Keller and General “Fightin Joe” Joseph Wheeler. Helen took her place in 2009

Ah, I gave Alabama’s Republican regime too much credit. Rosa was authorized by Congress.

Each state can send two statues of famous citizens for display in the Capitol, but the 2,700-pound Rosa Parks statue was commissioned by Congress — the first since 1873, and at nine feet tall, the first full-sized statue of an African-American in the Capitol complex. A bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been displayed in the Rotunda since 1986.

I guess they get three statutes whether their Republicans want one or not.

I checked out Minnesota’s two statue representatives. I couldn’t recall anything about either of them except that one had a county named after him.

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