State will build Sojourner Truth statue locally
New York state plans to build two statues, including one in Ulster County, that will honor suffragists to mark the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote in the state.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said a statue of Sojourner Truth will be built on the Empire State Trail in Ulster County, and a statue of Rosalie Gardiner Jones will be built in Cold Spring Harbor State Park in Suffolk County.
The exact location of the Truth statue was not specified. The Empire State Trail enters Ulster County from the Walkway Over the Hudson in Lloyd, includes sections of the Hudson Valley and Wallkill Valley rail trails and the Kingston Point Rail Trail, and exits the county at the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge in the town of Ulster.
The statues were announced on Monday, the centennial of the women’s suffrage movement.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who chairs the state’s suffrage commission, says there will be a call for submissions to select designs for each statue.
Of 25 statues currently on state property, only two depict women: Civil War surgeon Dr. Mary Walker in Oswego and frontierswoman Mary Jemison in Letchworth State Park, south of Rochester.
A statue of Truth, a noted abolitionist who was born in Ulster County, stands in a small municipal park in the center of the Esopus hamlet of Port Ewen, where she lived. A plaque commemorating her successful legal fight to free her son from slavery stands in front of the Ulster County Courthouse in Uptown Kingston, and the library at SUNY New Paltz is named for her.