WASHINGTON • The Democrat-led US House of Representatives passed a Bill that would remove statues and busts in the Capitol honouring individuals associated with slavery, the Confederacy and white supremacy.
The measure, passed on a 305-113 vote, would also commission a bust of justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court judge, to replace one of chief justice Roger Brook Taney, author of a key Supreme Court decision backing slavery.
Every Democrat voted in favour while the Republican votes came to 72 for and 113 against.
The action comes amid a national conversation on race and the legacy of slavery following the death of black American George Floyd while in police custody. His death sparked widespread protests, attempts to take down Confederate monuments and a push to rename military bases bearing the names of officers who fought for the South in the Civil War.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said those portrayed in such memorials "advocated barbarism and racism" and "their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage".
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat who sponsored the Bill, said the statues "must be relegated to the dark places of a shameful stain on our history".
The Bill identifies by name several, but not all, of the statues and busts that are targeted. It calls for removal of statues of those who voluntarily served in the Confederate Army in the Civil War.
There are 11 statues of Confederate officials in the Capitol's Statuary Hall, where each state can designate two to be placed.
They include statues of Mr Jefferson Davis, who served in the US Senate before becoming president of the confederacy.
A statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee is located elsewhere in the Capitol.
Among the statues or busts specifically named is one of former Supreme Court chief justice Roger Brook Taney, who wrote the majority opinion in the 1857 case Dred Scott v Sandford, which held that black people were not intended to be considered American citizens under the Constitution.
The Bill's prospects in the Republican-led Senate are uncertain. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has called removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol an attempt to "airbrush" history.
BLOOMBERG
