House votes to toss Taney bust, Confederate statues
WASHINGTON — The House voted Tuesday to approve a bill that would remove from the Capitol a bust of Roger Taney, the U.S. chief justice best known for an infamous pro-slavery decision, as well as statues of Jefferson Davis and others who served in the Confederacy.
The bill passed 285-120. A similar bill last year passed the House but failed to gain traction in the Senate.
Backers are hoping for a different outcome now that President Joe Biden is in the White House and Democrats control the Senate.
The vote comes against the backdrop of 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, D-Ga., said the Confederate statues send a message to Black people 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. No, they did something that was very hurtful to humanity,” 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 2-foot-high 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. Longer-term, 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 as 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.