Replacement of Bust of Roger Brooke Taney with Bust of Thurgood Marshall
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding, and I thank the ranking member, Mr. Davis, for his support of this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, the Capitol Building is the wellspring of American democracy, freedom, and equality. We don't always live that out as perfectly as we would like, but it is that simple.
Every time I walk to the floor, Mr. Speaker, I pass sandstone blocks quarried and hewn centuries ago by enslaved Black Americans. It is a tragic irony that the people's House was built by Americans who were originally excluded from those extraordinary first three words of our Constitution, ``We the People.''
While we cannot remove the stones and bricks that were placed here in bondage, we can ensure that the movable pieces of art we display here celebrate freedom; not slavery, not sedition, not segregation. That is why I sponsored legislation, which the House passed earlier this Congress, that would have removed the statues of those who supported slavery and segregation from the Capitol as well as the bust of Chief Justice Roger Brook Taney from the Old Senate Chamber.
That bill was cosponsored by Mr. Clyburn, the Democratic whip; by Joyce Beatty, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus; and Karen Bass, who was then the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and is about to be the mayor of Los Angeles.
That bill regarding whether ``all men are created equal,'' in his disgraceful Dred Scott ruling, Roger Brook Taney argued this: The general words above quoted, that is, all men are created equal, would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day--which was 1858--would be so understood.
I want you to think about that for a second. He said that when they acted in 1787, they said that all men were created equal. Today, of course, we would say all people are created equal. But Taney observed in 1858 that those words said some 70 years prior to that would lock them into the bigotry and division. And so he interpreted not in terms of what they would believe in 1858 but what they believed in 1787.
He went on to say: But the enslaved African-American race were not intended to be included and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this Declaration.
His narrow-minded, orginalist philosophy failed to acknowledge America's capacity for moral growth and for progress.
Indeed, the genius of our Constitution is that it did have moral growth. It did have expanded vision. It did have greater wisdom. Taney's ruling denied Black American citizenship, upheld slavery, and contributed, frankly, to the outbreak of the Civil War. That is why I and so many others advocated for his statue's removal from the Maryland State House.
When I was sworn into the Maryland Senate in January of 1967, Roger Brook Taney's statue stood on the east front of the Capitol of Maryland in Annapolis. It has since been removed. Governor Hogan, a Republican, led that effort to remove it.
The Maryland legislature led by Democrats supported that effort. And the irony is if you are on the east Capitol front, prior to his removal, you would have gone from Roger Brook Taney; if you had walked through the Annapolis State House, some 500 feet, come out on the west side, walked down the steps, you would have walked into the Thurgood Marshall Park.
What a historic vision of the growth of America, of the change of America, of the opening up and more equal America.
I advocated for this statue being removed in Maryland and for this bust to be removed from the entrance to the Old Senate Chamber.
I am glad that this is passing in a bipartisan fashion.
I am disappointed the Senate isn't ready to remove all the statues in the original bill. I am glad that we agree that Taney's bust needs to go immediately.
Mr. Speaker, I will continue to work with my colleagues next Congress to remove the other statues.
I look forward to advancing that mission with Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, Chairwoman Barbara Lee, who I did fail to mention--she was the principal sponsor of this bill--and Chairwoman Joyce Beatty; all of them, along with former Representative Karen Bass.
They happen to be all Democrats, but there were Republicans, many, many Republicans, supporting this effort because they, too, stand for equality and justice. They played an important part in developing the prior versions of this bill and its reality.
Our legislation, as has been observed, would also commission a new bust for Justice Thurgood Marshall, not to be put outside of the Old Senate Chamber, because the historian rightly observed, he was not a member of the Old Senate Chamber, but it will be placed at some appropriate place in the Capitol as the first African American to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States.
As a towering civil rights leader, a defender of our founding principles, and the first Black Supreme Court Justice, Marshall is a Marylander worthy of a place of honor in these historic halls.
In removing Taney's bust, I am not asking that we would hold Taney to today's moral standards. On the contrary, let us hold him to the standard of his contemporaries: Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, whom the gentleman mentioned, and all of those of their time who understood that the enslavement of others has always been an immoral act.
Figures like Taney belong in history textbooks and classroom discussions, not in marble and bronze on public displays of honor. Yes, we ought to know who the Roger Brook Taney is, a man who was greatly admired in his time in the State of Maryland, but he was wrong.
Over 3 million people visit our Capitol each year. The people we choose to honor in our Halls signal to those visitors which principles we cherish as a Nation. For Black Americans who have grown up in segregation, faced racial violence, and still confront institutional racism, today, seeing figures like Taney honored here is a searing reminder that the past is present. It need not be, however, our future.
Just last year, the January 6 insurrectionists carried Confederate flags through the Capitol's corridors, desecrated the poster outside my office honoring my friend John Lewis, and screamed racial slurs at police officers as they protected the lives and defended our Capitol.
That was a modern manifestation of the hatred of our past. As our friend Elijah Cummings used to say, ``We are better than this.'' And it need not be our future.
Taney represents that which holds our country back: Exclusion, injustice, complacency, and prejudice.
Thurgood Marshall conveys that which drives America forward: Inclusion, equality, perseverance, and justice.
Every Member of this body, all 435, talk in those terms. Such a change would show visitors that America does not shy away from our past; we rise above it to seize a better future.
It would show them that only in America could a man use the same court that wrongly upheld the enslavement of his own ancestors to expand the Constitution's promise of the blessings of liberty. It would show them that ``We the People'' means all the people.
Vote ``yes'' to celebrate freedom and democracy and justice in this Capitol.
Vote ``yes'' to declare that the hatred of our past need not and must not define our future.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, before my good friend from Maryland leaves the floor, I want to ensure that something is entered into the Congressional Record.
That I, Rodney Davis from Illinois, was minus 3 years old when my good friend, Mr. Hoyer, was sworn into the Maryland State Senate. To have a friend like Steny Hoyer, to be able to go out, like I am here in a few weeks, knowing that you have a bipartisan piece of legislation like this that is going to make Taney a gone-y when it comes to the statues here in the U.S. Capitol, and to know that we are talking and being able to have that bipartisan conversation is what I came here to do.
Steny, I know I am not supposed to address you here, but I am glad to yield to you if you would like to say something.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding. I would say that we are going to miss my friend who has been a person willing to work across the aisle on principles that this bill reflects, and I thank him for that. We will miss him.
I will remain here. I will not be majority leader, but I will remain working on behalf of the principles that are the best in our country. They are not Republican principles or Democratic principles; they are American principles. And that, I think, is what we all should, and most of the time, do.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for his friendship.
I thank him for sparring with me over many issues over the years. We have had a great time with that. There is one thing I know about Leader Hoyer and a lot of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle here, they have a great sense of humor. They enjoy the ability to get to know one another on a humorous, friendly level. That allows us, in my opinion, to be able to get to know each other better, to govern together. Today is going to be a great example of that.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source