Replacement of Bust of Roger Brooke Taney with Bust of Thurgood Marshall
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding, and I am glad to be back.
Madam Speaker, I have been out for 2 weeks, and now that I have a new knee, I am good for another 20 years. That is what they tell me. They guarantee me that.
Madam Speaker, when I brought this bill to the floor just about a year ago, I referred to our Capitol Building as a sacred space for democracy, a symbol around the world of democracy. The intervening months have shown us, in ways we could not have imagined then, just how true that statement was and is.
Sadly, we in this House, our colleagues in the Senate, all who work here, experienced on January 6 a wrenching reminder of how democracy demands our eternal defense and vigilance. We watched our temple of democracy defiled by a violent mob of insurrectionists. For many of us here, that was a watershed moment, seeing such evils pervade the halls of the American Capitol.
However, Madam Speaker, for African Americans, who have been serving here, working here, and visiting here for many decades, that sense of defilement of this sacred space is all too familiar for them.
Our colleague, the former speaker of the California Assembly, Karen Bass, made that clear when she spoke. When they see individuals like John Calhoun, Charles Aycock, and James Paul Clarke celebrated in stone and bronze in these halls, they are reminded that, for so much of our history, the leaders and leading institutions of our government and country did not view them as equal or, at times, even human.
When they enter the solemn Old Supreme Court Chamber and stare into the cold marble eyes of Roger Brooke Taney, they are reminded that, at one time, the highest court in our land declared that Black lives did not matter.
Mr. Speaker, we ought not be surprised when our fellow citizens of color raise signs that say: No, America, Black lives do matter. That is somewhat what this debate is about.
In the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision written by Justice Taney, a distinguished citizen of Maryland revered in his time for his intellect and his accomplishments, Taney, in this terrible decision, quoted the Declaration of Independence, which all of us quote so often: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'' Today, we would say all men and women are equal, irrespective of color.
But this Dred Scott decision ought to teach us a lesson today. It ought to humble us today. When people around us say, ``Boy, that is the right decision,'' because it happens to be the decision of the moment, not a decision of history.
Beneath those lines, Taney wrote these: ``The general words,'' that is, that all men are created equal, ``The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family.'' Hear me, colleagues. This is Taney speaking in a decision where he is about to say Black lives do not matter.
He said, however, that it ``would seem to embrace the whole human family,'' not divided by color or gender or nationality or religion, the whole human race. And he went on to say: ``And if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood.'' I want you to think about that.
I want you to think about it, colleagues, with humility. Frankly, I want those who argue for the originalist point of view to think of that. Taney thought of that. And he thought, in his day, in 1857, the whole human family would be covered by ``all men are created equal.''
But notwithstanding that belief, he did not so rule because he was mired in the past, and the progress of those some 90 years had alluded him because he went on to say: But ``the enslaved African race were not intended to be included and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this Declaration.'' An originalist.
The Founders were human. They were extraordinary humans, but they were human. Their environment shaped their thoughts, as they do ours.
Taney's words were used by the Confederacy during the Civil War to justify the creation of a regime built to sustain the enslavement of African Americans in perpetuity, with no possibility of recognizing their humanity.
Even though Taney said that in 1857, that would have been the popular definition of all men are created equal, Blacks and Whites alike.
And those words have been used ever since by bigots and white supremacists to justify segregation, racial violence, and discrimination.
Mr. Speaker, I say to my fellow colleagues that we must not allow the author of those words to hold a place of honor in our Capitol. That is why I introduced this legislation along with Representative Barbara Lee; my dear friend of over a half a century, Jim Clyburn; Representative Karen Bass, former Speaker of the California Assembly; Chairman Bennie Thompson from Mississippi; and Representative G. K. Butterfield a North Carolina former Supreme Court Justice; and the present chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty from Ohio.
Because this building, this sacred space, this temple of democracy has been defiled for too long. We owe it not to forget history. We must learn from history. But we ought not to honor that which defiled the principles for which we think we stand and for which I think we do stand.
It is time, Mr. Speaker, to remove those symbols of slavery, segregation, and sedition from these Halls. How recently we saw, remembered the savage genocide in Tulsa just a few weeks ago, justified in the minds of many, I am sure, that these, after all, were not men who were created equal. They were not children created in the image of God. And therefore, some rationalized the taking of their lives because, after all, their lives did not matter, and therefore, no one was prosecuted, no one was held accountable.
As I said, Roger Brooke Taney was from my State of Maryland, and I acknowledge, as I was growing up as a kid in the late 1950s in high school and then in college in the 1960s, my party was the segregationist party. And my party decided that we did not want to be that party and that there was not a home for segregationists in the Democratic Party. That is a decision we made consciously, knowing full well the cost and that is why Lyndon Johnson said when he signed one of the civil rights bills: We may have just given up the South.
In our State capital of Annapolis, Mr. Speaker, we removed the statue of Chief Justice Taney, the highest ranking Marylander in the Federal Government in history. It had stood there when I was sworn in as a member of the State Senate. And when I listened to Governor Agnew give his State of the Union, it was on the site of the Roger Brooke Taney statue on the east front of our Capitol.
If you turn and walk west through the Capitol of Maryland, you will come out on a park. It is the Thurgood Marshall Park, a testament to the progress and enlightenment that occurred from Taney to Marshall in our State.
The decision to remove Taney's statue was long overdue, but as the gentleman from Texas said Martin Luther King said: It is never too late to do the right thing. And this, today, is the right thing. It reflects our growth as a State as we have confronted the most difficult parts of our history and it will reflect our growth as we recognize it here, as we did overwhelmingly when we passed this last year. Over a third of my Republican colleagues joined the Democratic colleagues in saying Black lives do, in fact, matter.
Those who say we shouldn't teach about slavery or that we should sweep it under the rug or that we should skip over the lines in our Constitution that reference it, do a disservice to our understanding of America's greatness. Jim Clyburn, our whip, a civil rights hero in his own right, likes to quote de Tocqueville saying that America's greatness is not that it always does the right thing. America's greatness is that it is willing to correct its wrongs. We are great because we approach our past with humility and openness. And we are great because we continue to protect our democracy through more inclusion, more tolerance, more justice, more equality, that all men and women, irrespective of artificial distinctions or real distinctions, are equal in the eyes of our Constitution and of our laws.
That is why Democrats and Republicans came together earlier this month to make Juneteenth a national holiday, overwhelmingly, a handful voting against that, in an articulation of our principles today, not yesterday. That was Roger Brooke Taney's great blindness. That is why I believe we can take this important step together today.
Mr. Speaker, I ask the House once again to join me in passing this legislation, to remove these statues and bust of Chief Justice Taney from the Capitol. Not to forget them. Not to say they weren't part of history, but they are not deserving of our honor. Not because we want to erase history but because we are determined to confront it.
As a Marylander, proud of steps we have taken in Annapolis, I believe that Justice Thurgood Marshall would be a far better ambassador for the greatness of American democracy and for our State of Maryland than Roger Brooke Taney. Where Roger Brooke Taney represents the worst of American justice and racism, Thurgood Marshall represents the best of justice and equality. He deserves to be honored in this Capitol for his trailblazing career and lifelong dedication to civil rights and equal justice for all.
Mr. Speaker, I hope all of my colleagues, not as Republicans and Democrats, but as Americans who believe we are a special, exceptional country because we lift up the individual and we protect the 1 against the 99 if the 1 is right. That is the essence of America. And even though they did not live it out perfectly, they articulated the perfection of all men are created equal. And endowed not by the Constitution, not by the laws of Congress, not by the majority vote of their fellow citizens, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.
That is what this vote is about today, and I urge my colleagues, vote ``yes'' for America, vote ``yes'' for its principles that are so respected properly around the world.
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