House votes to remove bust, Confederate statues

WASHINGTON — The House approved a bill Tuesday evening that would remove from the Capitol a bust of Roger Taney, the U.S. chief justice best known for an infamous proslavery decision, as well as statues of Jefferson Davis and others who served in the Confederacy.

A similar bill last year failed to gain traction, but backers are hoping for a different outcome now that President Biden is in the White House and Democrats control the Senate. The chamber voted 285120 to approve the legislation, with 67 Republicans, including the party’s top leader, joining with every Democrat who voted to support the changes.

The vote came against the backdrop of a larger reckoning in the U.S. with racism, one that’s prompted a reassessment of statues and other symbols that valorize those who upheld white supremacy. Protesters decrying racism last year targeted Confederate monuments in multiple cities, leading to many being taken down. But many others remain in places of honor, including at the U.S. Capitol.

Rep. Hank Johnson, DGa., said the Confederate statues send a message to Blacks that their lives are not valued because those being honored “stood for the proposition that you were less than human.”

“It’s personally an affront to me as a Black man to walk around and look at these figures and see them standing tall, looking out as if they were visionaries and they did something that was great,” Johnson said.

The Taney bust would be replaced with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice to serve on the nation’s highest court. The 2foothigh marble bust of Taney is outside a room in the Capitol where the Supreme Court met from 1810 to 1860. It was in that room that Taney, the nation’s fifth chief justice, announced the Dred Scott decision, sometimes called the worst decision in the court’s history.

The Supreme Court held that Scott as a Black man was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue, and found that legislation restricting slavery in certain territories was unconstitutional.

Three other statues honoring white supremacists — including former U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina — would also be immediately removed under the legislation. Longerterm, the architect of the Capitol would be instructed to identify any other statues depicting those who served in the Confederate States of America for removal from public display.

The statues would go back to the states that sent them. The statue of Davis, for example, would be returned to Mississippi and that of Alexander Hamilton Stephens would be returned to Georgia. Davis served as the Confederacy’s president and Stephens was its vice president.

Each state gets to submit two statues for display in the Capitol. When the donated statue arrives, it is placed in a location selected by the Joint Committee on the Library, a group of 10 lawmakers from both chambers that oversees works of fine art in the building.

Republicans note that some states are already working to replace some of about a dozen statues that would be potentially removed under the bill. North Carolina, for example, is replacing a statue of Charles Aycock, a former governor and white supremacist, with that of the Rev. Billy Graham.