House Votes to Remove Confederate Statues From Capitol Grounds

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. House voted Wednesday to remove statues of Confederate figures and other memorials celebrating proponents of slavery and segregation from the Capitol grounds.

The Democratic majority was joined by 72 Republicans in the 305-113 vote to approve the bill. The action comes amid a national conversation on race and the legacy of slavery following the killing of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. Floyd’s death sparked protests, attempts to take down Confederate monuments and a push to rename military bases bearing the names of officers who fought for the South in the Civil War.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said those portrayed in such memorials “advocated barbarism and racism” and “their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who sponsored the bill, said the statues “must be relegated to the dark places of a shameful stain on our history,”

The bill identifies by name several, but not all, of the statues and busts that are targeted. It calls for removal of statues of those who voluntarily served in the Confederate Army in the Civil War.

There are 11 statues of Confederate officials in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, where each state can designate two to be placed. They include statues of Jefferson Davis, who served in the U.S. Senate before becoming president of the confederacy, and his vice president, Alexander Stephens, who served in the House before and after the Civil War. A statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is located elsewhere in the Capitol.

Among the statues or busts specifically named is one of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brook Taney, who wrote the majority opinion in the 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that Black people were not intended to be considered U.S. citizens under the Constitution. Taney’s bust in the old Supreme Court chamber will be replaced under the bill by a bust of Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the Supreme Court.

The bill’s prospects in the Senate are uncertain. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has called removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol an attempt to “airbrush” history.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina told reporters Wednesday said that “nobody is talking about destroying statues.” He said they will be put in storage until states come and get them.

“Put them in their proper perspective, in a museum,” Clyburn said.

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