House votes to REMOVE all Confederate statues from Congress and replace a bust of Chief Justice Roger Taney with Thurgood Marshall - despite opposition from 120 Republicans
The House voted Tuesday to remove the bust of Chief Justice Roger Taney and statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davies and others who supported the Confederacy from the U.S. Capitol.
Democrats were unanimous in their support for the bill and were joined by 67 Republicans, with the bill passed by a vote of 285-120.
The vote comes after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused Democrats on the House Floor of trying to hide their party's 'shameful' racist past.
'Let me state a simple fact. All the statues being removed by this bill are statues of Democrats,' the Republican leader said, adding that he planned to vote in favor of the legislation. 'I think the bill should go further. Maybe it's time the Democrats change the name of their party.'
McCarthy said the bill showed that the Democrats were 'desperate' to prove that their party has progressed from their 'days of supporting slavery, supporting Jim Crow laws or supporting the KKK.'
The Democratic House majority has been proactive since last summer's protests over the death of George Floyd in removing symbols of the Confederacy from prominent locales.
Last June House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would be removing portraits of four former House speakers who sided with the south to mark Juneteenth.
'They were all Democrats,' McCarthy also pointed out Tuesday.
The vote on Tuesday means that 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, will be removed from the U.S. Capitol.
Taney ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857 that slaves were not United States citizens and could not bring lawsuits into federal courts.
The House voted Tuesday to remove the bust of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the U.S. chief justice best known for writing the infamous pro-slavery decision Dred Scott, which said black people are not U.S. citizens
Lawmakers passed a bill which will also remove the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis (center) from the Capitol
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy taunted Democrats on the House floor Tuesday, rubbing their noses in their party's racist past prior to a vote on a bill that would remove statues and busts of those who supported the Confederacy from the U.S. Capitol
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.
Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, 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.
Taney's bust will be replaced with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice. Here he's pictured in 1958 while working as chief counsel for the NAACP
The Taney bust would be replaced with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice to serve on the nation's highest court.
Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman said he was against the bill because Marshall was a key vote in the Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationally in 1973.
'I will always look at him as ... the guy who kind of put the foot on the gas and legalized late term abortion,' Grothman said, according to CBS News.
Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks said before the vote that he'd be voting the bill down because he believed it represented 'cancel culture and historical revisionism.'
Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana parroted points made by former President Donald Trump when he voted against the bill.
'The South lost, and our Union is strong today, and the great victory of our constitutional government in the Civil War over slavery and secession should be celebrated,' Rosendale said, according to Newsweek.
'Unfortunately, Democrats, animated by the Critical Race Theory concepts of structural racism, microaggressions, and a United States based solely on white supremacy, have chosen to remove statues that underscore the failures of our pre-1861 Constitution. Make no mistake, those who won the West and George Washington are next,' Rosendale added.
During last summer's George Floyd protests, Trump claimed slave-owning founding fathers, like Washington and Thomas Jefferson, would be cancelled by liberals next.
House Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk said he voted against the bill because he believed the Democrats rushed it procedurally.
'My opposition to this bill isn't because of the goal that we're trying to achieve, but it's the way that the majority continues to skirt procedure in this body,' the Georgia GOP lawmaker said, according to NPR. 'For the second consecutive Congress, this bill was rushed to the floor without a hearing or a markup in the Committee on House Administration.'
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