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| Jeannine Cook | |
Jeannine Cook, owner of Harriett's Bookshop in Philadelphia, Pa., and its sister store, Ida's Bookshop in Collingswood, N.J., has started a petition and letter-writing campaign to make Harriet Tubman Day (March 10) a federal holiday.
So far the petition has garnered more than 7,800 signatures, per NBC News, and Pennsylvania Representative Brendan Boyle introduced a bill to the House in March to make it a federal holiday, the first named for a woman. The bill (HR 7013) now needs cosponsors, which is where the letter writing campaign comes in.
Cook has given out blank postcards at her bookstore and has asked readers to send pictures of their letters via Twitter, so that the bookshop can eventually publish those letters as a book. She has also spoken to several members of Congress local to Philadelphia.
She told NBC News: "It's the multifacetedness of Harriet that I find so extraordinary. There were so many ways she, I believe, exemplifies how to take the worst of what society has offered and to transmutate that into an immense amount of power--not for yourself, but for the people around you."