Officials including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi unveiled the 11-foot-tall statue of the famed educator at a special ceremony. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Flabv), Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), and Rep. Frederick Wilson (D-Fla.) spoke at the event. Bethune is depicted wearing a graduation cap and gown, a nod to her role in advancing education for African-Americans, and holding a black rose, her favorite flower. In another first, the artist who carved the statue is Latina Nilda Comas, who used marble from the Tuscany cave made famous by Renaissance Man Michelangelo. Comas splits her time between Italy and Fort Lauderdale.

Bethune's parents were former slaves. Mary was one of 17 children who picked cotton in the fields to help the family survive. She was the only one of her family to attend school and found in education her lifelong passion. Bethune opened a boarding school for African-American children in 1904; that was the genesis of what is now Bethune-Cookman University.

Bethune later served as an advisor to a handful of U.S. Presidents, serving on numerous councils and playing a prominent role in the formation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Black Cabinet. She was also a longtime vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons and a cofounder of the United Negro College Fund.

Bethune's statue now stands amongst such other famous Americans as Samuel Adams, Henry Clay, and Jeannette Rankin. Another African-American to be so honored was Rosa Parks; Congress commissioned that statue in 2013. The statues of Bethune and Parks stand side by side. Elsewhere in the U.S. Capitol stand statues depicting civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Sojourner Truth.

In 2018, the State of Florida decided to honor Bethune with a statue in Statuary Hall. At the time, the state already had the maximum of two statues: inventor John Gorrie, whom many say was the inventor of mechanical refrigeration, and Edmund Kirby Smith, an officer in first the U.S. Army and then the Confederate States Army. Bethune's statue replaced Smith's, which now sits in temporary storage at the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee.

Statuary Hall contains statues commissioned by each of the 50 states. The large, two-story room is south of the Capitol Rotunda and was where the House of Representatives met in the early 19th Century. Congress established the National Statuary Hall Collection in 1864 and unveiled the first statue seven years later. It is up to the individual states who is depicted in the statues. Some statues depict people more widely known across the country than others. Bethune is the first African-American so honored. Already in the Statuary Hall have been statues of Native Americans Sacagawea and Sequoyah.