Honoring Mary McLeod Bethune: Marble statue of civil-rights leader to represent Florida at U.S. Capitol

A marble statue of educator and civil-rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune will be unveiled Wednesday to represent Florida in the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. The likeness of Bethune will replace a statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, which stood in the Capitol for nearly a century. Bethune, who died in 1955, will be the first Black person to represent a state in the collection.