Women at the US Capitol Trivia Quiz

Answer: Alabama

Helen Keller was from Tuscumbia, Alabama. A childhood illness left her deaf and blind. Despite this, she was able to learn to communicate through the assistance of teacher Ann Sullivan. This is the "Miracle Worker" part of the story that gets told in schools.

Interestingly, as an adult, Keller became a radical socialist. Meeting with men who had been blinded in industrial accidents and prostitutes blinded by venereal disease convinced her of the injustices of capitalism and led her to socialism. Keller was an early supporter of the NAACP, a remarkable move for a white Alabaman. She was also one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union. For more on Helen Keller's radical life, check out "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen.

Keller died in June 1968 at the age of 88. The statue of Keller, designed by Edward Hlavka, was donated by Alabama in 2009. It can can be found in the Capitol Visitors Center. The statue shows a young Helen at a water pump.

Answer: Medicine

Doctor Florence Sabin spent her formative years in Colorado before moving out east, where she attended Smith College before graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1900.

Sabin started teaching at Johns Hopkins in 1902, and became a full professor in 1917, the first woman in the United States to become a professor of medicine. Her speciality was anatomy and in 1921 she became the President of the American Association of Anatomists. And in 1925, she became the first woman to be admitted to the National Academy of Science.

Sabin worked at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research from 1925 to 1928 before retiring to Colorado. In the 1940s, she crusaded to reform Colorado's public health system, and the state's public health laws are named after her. Sabin died in October 1953, and the statue was donated in 1959.

Florence Sabin's statue is in the Hall of Columns. It was designed by Joyce Buba.

Note: There is no apparent link between Florence Sabin and polio vaccine researcher Albert Sabin, whose family changed their name when they emigrated to the United States.

Answer: Temperance

Born in upstate New York, Frances Willard grew up in Oberlin, Ohio and Janesville, Wisconsin. Willard started out her college career at Milwaukee Female College, which evolved into the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (my alma mater). She transferred to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1858, and spent the rest of her life in the Chicago area.

Willard began her career in academics, but became frustrated with university politics. She began an activist, and in 1879 became head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. For the last twenty years of her life, Willard was one of the nation's most outspoken voices for prohibition, traveling all across the country to give speeches promoting the cause. Although she died in 1898, her cause succeeded with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment

Illinois submitted the statue of Willard in 1905, and she was the first woman to have a statue in the Capitol. The statue, designed by Helen Farnsworth Mears, is located in National Statuary Hall.

Answer: Education

Maria Sanford was born in Connecticut in 1836. After graduating from college, she worked as a teacher before becoming a professor at Swarthmore College in 1871. After a decade at Swarthmore, she moved to the University of Minnesota.

Sanford taught at Minnesota from 1880 to 1909. She was a professor of rhetoric and art history. Sanford was a popular speaker, lecturing frequently about patriotic topics around the country. One of the dorms at the University of Minnesota is named after her. Sanford died in Washington DC in April 1920.

The statue of Sanford was designed by Evelyn Raymond and was donated in 1958. It is currently located in the Capitol Visitor Center.

Answer: True

Jeannette Rankin holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve in the US Congress. She was elected as a Representative from the state of Montana in 1916.

Rankin was born in Missoula in 1880. She graduated from the University of Wyoming with a degree in biology in 1904, but then became a social worker in San Francisco. She then moved to Seattle and helped the women of Washington State gain the vote.

Rankin became a leader in the suffrage movement, and gained suffrage for women in Montana in 1914. Two years later, she ran for Congress and won. On April 2, 1917, she voted against entry into the First World War. Only 50 members voted against the war. Rankin was gerrymandered by the state legislature, so she ran for the Senate, but lost in November 1918.

Rankin spent the next 20 years as a peace activist, much of the time in Georgia. With the world at war, she ran for Congress in 1940 and won. On December 7, 1941, she was the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war against Japan. She did not run for re-election. Rankin spent the next three decades as a peace and justice advocate. She died in California in May 1973.

The Jeanette Rankin statue, designed by Terry Mimnaugh, was donated by Montana in 1985. It is in the Capitol Visitors Center.

Answer: Paiute

Sarah Winnemucca was the daughter of Paiute chief Winnemucca. Born in 1844, she was noted for her skill with languages and became an interpreter who negotiated with the US Army. The northern Piaute were in the northwestern area of the current state of Nevada. The family is remembered by the city of the same name, the county seat of Humboldt County.

Noted for her bravery, Sarah rescued her people when they were kidnaped by the Bannock indians, leading them on a 230 mile hike over hostile terrain. Winnemucca gave hundreds of speeches on behalf of her people, and even met with President Rutherford Hayes.

Hayes wrote of her life in "Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims" in 1883. It was the first book by a Native American woman published in the United States. She also started a school, teaching in both English and native languages. Winnemucca died in 1891.

The Winnemucca statue, designed by Benjamin Victor, came to the Capitol in 2005. It is in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol Visitors Center.

Answer: North Dakota

Despite Sacajewa being born in Idaho (Lemhi County), it was North Dakota that donated her statue to the Capitol. She was a member of the Lemhi Shoshone tribe, and was abducted by Hidasa raiders around 1800, which is how she wound up in North Dakota.

Sacagawea met Lewis and Clark near present day Mandan, ND in the winter of 1804. She and her husband traveled with the expedition in April 1805, two months after the birth of her first son. After traveling to the Pacific Ocean, they returned to North Dakota by August 1806.

Sacajawea either died quite young in 1812 or died a very old woman in 1884 - records are unclear. In any case, she played a critical role in the exploration of the early United States.

The Sacajawea statue in the capitol was given in 2003, to mark the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. It was sculpted by Leonard Crunelle in 1910, and is based on Mink Woman, Sacajawea's granddaughter.

The US Capitol statue is just one of dozens honoring her; most are found in the western United States. There are more statues to Sacajawea than any other American woman.

Answer: Architecture

Mother Joseph was born Esther Pariseau in Montreal in 1823. In 1843, she joined the Sisters of Charity of Providence in Montreal. In 1856, she was chosen to lead a group of missionaries to what is now the northwestern United States.

She was well known as an architect and artist, helping design hospitals, academies, schools and orphanages in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. After decades of philanthropic work, Mother Joseph died in 1902. Their base of operations was in Vancouver, Washington, just north of Portland, and that is also where she is buried. Her birthday, April 16, is a state holiday in Washington.

The Mother Joseph statue was sculpted by Felix W de Weldon, and donated by Washington State in 1980. It is located in the Capitol Visitors Center.

Answer: First female justice of the peace

Esther Hobart (nee McQuigg) Morris was born in Spencer, New York in 1812. She traveled to Wyoming with her husband and sons at the age of 57 in 1869. It was an auspicious time to arrive, as Wyoming had just given women the right to vote. Hobart Morris was named Justice of the Peace on February 14, 1870. She was the first woman in the United States to hold a judicial office.

Morris ruled in 27 cases during her 8 months in office, and all of her rulings were upheld. She was not allowed to run for re-election. Her stay in Wyoming was short; by 1872, Morris had moved back east, to New York and later Illinois.

Morris did remain active in the women's suffrage movement, and was even a delegate to the 1896 Republican National Convention in Saint Louis. She died in Cheyenne on April 2, 1902. The statue of Morris was designed by Avard Fairbanks, and donated in 1960. It is located in the Hall of Columns.

Susanna Salter of Argonia, Kansas was the first female mayor (1887). Colorado was the first state to elect women to the legislature (1894). Arabella Mansfield of Iowa was the first US woman admitted to the bar (1869).

Answer: Montgomery Bus Boycott (1956)

Rosa Parks was more than a mere seamstress before becoming a Civil Rights icon. She was the Secretary for the Montgomery NAACP. Parks worked closely with Edgar Nixon, one of Alabama's leading civil rights activists and had attended Highlander School in Tennessee along with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Parks entered the history books on December 1, 1955 when she disobeyed an order to move from her seat on a Montgomery bus. Her arrest sparked the bus boycott, which lasted almost a year and ultimately resulted in the integration of Montgomery's bus system.

Shortly after the boycott ended, Parks moved to Detroit, where she continued her civil rights activism. Between 1965 and 1988, she worked for Congressman John Conyers. Parks received numerous honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When she died in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in state in the Rotunda of the US Capitol.

The Rosa Parks statue was commissioned in 2005 and placed in 2013. It is part of National Statuary Hall. The statue was made by Daub and Firmin Studios, LLC. It is notable as the first full length statue of an African-American person of either gender.