The bill requires the removal of the statues of individuals who voluntarily served the Confederacy, as well as three statues of men who championed slavery, segregation and racism, from the complex.
The Senate would also have to pass legislation for it to take effect. Republicans in that chamber have rejected efforts by Congress to address the statues, saying states should make the decision.
Across the Capitol, there are a dozen statues honoring people like Jefferson Davis, who was President of the Confederacy, its Vice President, and Robert E. Lee.
Some represent soldiers and generals in Confederate uniforms. A belt buckle on a statue of Joseph Wheeler, a general in the Confederate Army, is clearly marked “CSA” for the Confederate States of America.
Each state sends two statues of prominent residents to the Capitol as part of the National Statues Collection Statues. Several states had already been making plans to change their statues.
Florida is tearing down its statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith and replacing it with civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune. Arkansas is pulling out its two controversial statues, swapping them out for country singer Johnny Cash and civil rights leader Daisy Bates.
The bill slated for a House vote on Wednesday would also remove the bust of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote Dred Scott’s opinion stating that African-Americans could not be citizens of the United States, of the former chamber of the Supreme Court.
“While the removal of the bust of Supreme Court President Roger Brooke Taney from the United States Capitol does not relieve Congress of the historical mistakes it made to protect the institution from slavery, it expresses Congress’s recognition of one of the most notorious that it has never taken place in one of its rooms, that of the decision of the Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford, “says the legislation.
A bust of Thurgood Marshall, the first judge of the Black Supreme Court, would replace Taney’s bust.
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