Members of Congress To Replace Monuments on Capitol Hill

The House of Representatives voted to remove from the Capitol Confederate statues and the bust of a Supreme Court justice whose verdict sanctioned slavery. It’s part of a broader revision of American history.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (285-120) to remove memorial figures of individuals who supported slavery from the U.S. Capitol. Every Democrat and 67 Republicans supported the bill. A similar measure did not pass in the Senate last year, but its authors are certain that this time will be different. In January, Democrats took control of the House and the White House.

The bill is a part of lively discussions about U.S. history. During the wave of the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd, in many towns, demonstrators toppled statues of 19th century Southern leaders. Two weeks ago, on June 19, Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the abolition of slavery in various parts of the U.S., was established as a federal holiday. Additionally, there is a heated dispute over the teaching of racial issues in schools. It was initiated by The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which attempted to narrate U.S. history by emphasizing slavery and African American contributions to building the country.

Reorganization of the Capitol

“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,” Georgia Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson commented.

The bill provides for the removal of the bust of Justice Roger Taney, the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. It would be replaced with the statue of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the nation’s highest court.

Just over a meter high, the marble bust of Taney is located outside a room in the Capitol, where the Supreme Court met from 1810-1860. It was in that room that Taney announced the famous Dred Scott decision. It held that Scott, as a Black man, was not a citizen and therefore had no right to file a lawsuit. Further, Taney ruled that it was unconstitutional for local legislatures to restrict slavery in their territories.

It is worth noting that other statues of fierce opponents of the emancipation movements would be removed from the U.S. Capitol — including those of former South Carolina U.S. Vice President John Calhoun, and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.

Will the US Clean Up after Itself?

The statues would go back to the states that sent them. For instance, Davis would be returned to Mississippi and his vice president, Alexander Hamilton Stephens, to Georgia.

Each state gets to send two statues to Congress. They are then displayed in a representative, semicircular hall with a gallery (National Statuary Hall) south of the Rotunda. The location is selected by a special committee, a group of 10 representatives and senators.

As reported by the AP, some states did not wait for the bill to pass and have already started working to remove the statues. For example, just last year, at the request of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, the Confederate statue of General Robert E. Lee was removed.

The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, commented at the time that he prefers such decisions to be made by individual states.