Statue of Thurgood Marshall to replace bust of racist Supreme Court justice at US Capitol
Subject
Thurgood Marshall; U.S. Supreme Court; U.S. Capitol
Description
The civil rights attorney was the Supreme Court’s first African-American justice.
The statue of American civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall will replace the bust of late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney in the Capitol, according to NBC News.
As NPR reports, House lawmakers on Wednesday passed a bill calling for the removal of Taney’s bust, saying it is “unsuitable for the honor of display to the many visitors to the Capitol.”
It was Taney who authored Dred Scott’s decision, which ruled that Black people were ineligible to become U.S. citizens.
The statue of Taney, who led the Supreme Court from 1836 to 1864, sits at the entrance of the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol, NBC News reports. The legislation also calls for a bust of Marshall, the first Black person to serve on the high court, to be created within in two years and placed in the Capitol.
“While the removal of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s bust from the Capitol does not relieve the Congress of the historical wrongs it committed to protect the institution of slavery, it expresses Congress’s recognition of one of the most notorious wrongs to have ever taken place in one of its rooms, that of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s Dred Scott v. Sandford decision,” the legislation says, according to NPR.
Creator
Source
https://thegrio.com/2022/12/16/thurgood-marshall-statue-in-capitol/
Publisher
thegrio.com
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