“I’m going to miss her,” said Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, speaking of the 7-foot-3-inch statue of Martha Hughes Cannon standing outside the historic Supreme Court Chambers at the Utah Capitol. She means “so much more to me than just an important figure in the past,” Henderson said. The statue is finally on her way to Washington, D.C.
Henderson visits Martha and, on occasion, gives her a fist bump. “She’s someone that I identify with on a lot of levels and someone that I admire for knocking down barriers that made it possible for me to be where I am,” said Henderson.
Cannon was the first female Senator, elected in 1896. Henderson was the 27th, elected in 2012. That’s not even enough to fill Utah’s 29 current Senate seats. You could say that the two women elected to the Utah Senate 116 years apart are friends. Henderson said she does feel a special kinship with the nation’s first elected state senator and has looked to Cannon’s example multiple times during her time in elected office, especially during difficult, challenging and lonely times, drawing courage and strength from her predecessor’s example.
“I have gleaned a lot of inspiration from Martha’s story and while everyone is going to take away something different from her story, for me, Martha represents the idea that you don’t have to solve all the problems yourself,” Henderson told the Deseret News. “It’s OK to do your part and hand it off to the next person. It’s OK that not all the barriers have been removed, but following Martha’s example, I try to remove a few of those bricks from the brick wall for the women coming behind me.”
She laughs when asked to explain the process behind the legislation to send Martha to Washington. “It ended up being the most controversial bill I worked on in my eight years in the Senate,” she said.
The effort began with then-Rep. Adam Gardiner and was taken over by Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, when Gardiner left the Legislature. Henderson was all-in on supporting the effort. When legislation ultimately passed in 2018, she showed up on the morning of the vote with a yellow rose boutonniere for every member of the Senate.
Then she told the story of the “war of the roses” in Tennessee in 1920, when wearing yellow roses meant support for women’s suffrage and red roses meant opposition. By all appearances, those wearing red were going to defeat the bill. But young Harry Burn, influenced by his mother’s letter urging him to “do the right thing” and support women’s suffrage, changed his vote from no to yes and then escaped angry colleagues by leaving through an upstairs window. Tennessee became the final state needed for ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Henderson said that the beauty in overcoming the controversy about sending Martha to Washington was that they were able to shine light not only on the woman Martha, but also on the issue of Utah’s involvement in the women’s suffrage movement. “We were able to build a beautiful army of supporters that may not have even heard about it if it hadn’t been so controversial,” she said.
Henderson said that no one can honestly tell the story of equal rights in America without talking about Utah’s participation and influence. In fact, her favorite quote of Cannon’s is this: “The story of the struggle for women suffrage in Utah is the story of all efforts for the advancement and betterment of humanity.”
That powerful vision is part of who we are and where we are today, Henderson said. Cannon’s influence is still being felt today. She sponsored the legislation creating what is now the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, housed in a building that bears her name. In perhaps a karmic twist of fate, the year her statue was originally meant to be placed in Statuary Hall is the year a global pandemic shut everything down.
Martha got an extra four years to inspire Utahns with her trailblazing legacy. Now, she will have to opportunity to do that for a global audience. The U.S. Capitol Visitors Center has an average of 3 million visitors each year, roughly the same number as the entire Utah population.
The farewell party for the Martha Hughes Cannon statue, co-hosted by Better Days and the Utah Historical Society, will be June 5, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m on the south steps of the Utah Capitol. There will be music, activities and food trucks, with a short program at 7:30 p.m. And then she will be on her way.
