A marble bust of Chief Justice Roger Taney is displayed in the Old Supreme Court Room in the United States Capitol on March 9, 2020.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
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A marble bust of Chief Justice Roger Taney is displayed in the Old Supreme Court Room in the United States Capitol on March 9, 2020.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
House of Representatives passed final law to replace bust of Roger TaneySupreme Court judge who wrote Dred Scott decisionat the Capitol with one of the Thurgood MarshallThe first black man to serve on the Supreme Court.
The infamous Dred Scott of 1857 decided to support slavery and determined that Negroes were not citizens of the United States. The bill, which passed Wednesday and is now moving to President Biden’s desk, says the bust is “inappropriate for the honor of being displayed in front of many visitors to the Capitol.”
Taney’s statue is located at the entrance to the Old Supreme Court Room in the Capitol where the Supreme Court is met from 1810 to 1860. Taney, the fifth chief justice, led the court from 1836 to 1864.
“While the removal of the bust of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney from the Capitol does not alleviate the historic mistakes that Congress made to protect the institution of slavery, it does represent the recognition of Congress on one of the most notorious mistakes ever made in one of its chambers, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s room Dred Scott v. Sandford decision,” law speak.
Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh ordered remove four Confederate monumentsincluding one of Taney, in 2017. Just two days later, Maryland eliminate another statue of Taney, who was also a state official Minister of Justicefrom the State campus.
“Taney’s ruling denied black American citizenship, perpetuated slavery, and frankly contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War,” said Representative Steny Hoyer, D-Md., speaking on the floor of America on Wednesday. “That’s why I and so many others support the removal of his statue from the Maryland State Building.”
The removal of Taney’s bust was part of a larger movement to topple statues of Confederate figures. The anti-racism protests following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 led to the removal nearly 100 Confederate monuments that year alone.
Congress voted to replace the bust of Taney at the U.S. Capitol with a statue of Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s first Black deputy justice.
Bob Schutz/AP
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Bob Schutz/AP
Congress voted to replace the bust of Taney at the U.S. Capitol with a statue of Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s first Black deputy justice.
Bob Schutz/AP
By law, Taney’s bust must be removed within 45 days of the bill’s enactment, and Marshall’s bust must be removed within two years.
“In removing Taney’s bust, I’m not asking that we keep Taney’s statue by today’s ethical standards,” Hoyer said. “On the contrary, let us regard him as the standard of his contemporaries, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln … and all who understand that enslaving others has always been a immoral act.”
