REMOVING CONFEDERATE STATUES FROM CAPITOL:

Voting 305 for and 113 against, the House on July 22 passed a bill (HR 7573) that would remove from the Capitol building a bust of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the author of the Dred Scott vs. Sandford ruling in 1857 that African-Americans could not be citizens of the United States or sue in federal courts. The bill also would banish from the Capitol the statues or busts of Confederate and/or pro-slavery leaders including Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Confederate commander; Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy president and a U.S. senator and House member; John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a U.S. vice president and senator; John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, a U.S. vice president and Confederate war secretary; former North Carolina Gov. Charles B. Aycock, and former Arkansas governor and U.S. senator James P. Clarke. Under the bill, the Taney bust on the Senate side of the Capitol would be replaced with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice. All removals would have to occur within 45 or 120 days and the statues would be returned to their donor states.

James Clyburn, D-S.C., said, “I am not for destroying any statue. … Put them where they can be studied. … But do not honor [these individuals]. Do not glorify them. Take them out of this great schoolhouse so that the people who visit here can be uplifted by what this country is all about.”

Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said, “If we remove memorials to every person in this building who ever made a bad decision … this will be a very barren place, indeed. It is only by the bad things in our history that we can truly measure all of the good things in our history.”

A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.

ARKANSAS

Voting no: Bruce Westerman, R-4

TEXAS

Voting no: Louie Gohmert