Replacing Bust of Roger Brooke Taney with Bust of Thurgood Marshall

Floor Speech

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Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, 33 years ago, I stood near this spot and watched Thurgood Marshall come through these doors as a member of the Supreme Court at a State of the Union address. And as a Marylander and as a Baltimorean, I had a great sense of pride.

I got to know Mr. Marshall. All he ever said by his eloquence and his example was this is how we ought to be as Supreme Court justices.

I must tell you, I was dismayed, though, years earlier, to learn as a young student at Morgan State University the history of Roger B. Taney, who did just the opposite to my spirit and just the opposite, I think, to what we believe Supreme Court Justices should act like and how they conduct themselves.

A gentleman from the other side earlier said that Mr. Taney rendered the worst Supreme Court decision ever. And he is exactly right. That decision said that Black people had no rights for which the White man must respect, and therefore that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his own benefit. It also said that Black people born in America, like Dred Scott, were not citizens and it eviscerated the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

So replacing the statue of Taney with one instead of Thurgood Marshall seems to me the way we ought to go as a Chamber. I hope in a bipartisan fashion, not only for ourselves, but to say to all the visitors that come through this building that we will continue to hold high real American heroes that sought to keep us together, and we will not honor those who sought to divide us.

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Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's kind and overly gracious remarks. I appreciate also his sense of history and for what I think today is being displayed as a bipartisan effort to draw attention to and to reconcile a very real problem.

So I will be more than happy to do that. And Lincoln was one of my heroes in many respects, not just because he signed, as Mr. Butterfield said, an executive order in 1863, but that he reminded us of what we were supposed to be as a Nation. Was he flawed? Yes. Are we flawed? Yes. Do we increase our ability to grow together? The absolute answer is yes. So I do appreciate the gentleman's comments, and I appreciate him yielding.

Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I will reclaim my time.

That is exactly why we still, as a Nation, have so much to learn about each other. We have so much to learn as to why we live, and we are blessed to live in what I consider the greatest country on God's green Earth.

The opportunity for every American to do what we do, to serve in this great institution, is something that should be cherished.

Those issues that seemingly divide us more in a Nation of prosperity, we need to educate the youth, we need to educate America, and how we can come together, not just correcting some of the awful, evil parts of our Nation's history, but let's continue to correct the division that exists today, not just on this floor, but in this country.

And if we can stand together in this instance, we can surely stand together and make this country, at a time and place of civil unrest, a better place for every single American in this country.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank again all of my colleagues. I respect their opinions, their ideas. But today is a day of history. Today is a day that we are going to band together in a bipartisan way.

And I commend my good friend and look forward to hosting him in Springfield, Illinois.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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