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Congress has voted to remove a Capitol bust of Supreme Court racist Dred Scott decision author Justice Roger Brooke Taney. It will be replaced with a bust of Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court Justice, pictured here in an official portrait taken in 1976. File Photo courtesy Library of Congress
Dec. 15 (UPI) — The House on Wednesday passed legislation that will remove a Capitol statue of Dred Scott decision author Supreme Court Justice Roger Brooke Taney and replace it with a bust of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court Justice.
The U.S. Senate already passed the legislation and it is headed to President Biden for his signature to become law. Taney’s bust will be removed from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol within 45 days after the bill becomes law.
Taney authored the U.S. Supreme Court decision that denied a bid by Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, for freedom from slavery, ruling that slaves had no civil rights.
The legislation also directs the Joint Committee on the Library to remove “all statues of individuals who voluntarily served the Confederate States of America from display in the United States Capitol.”
The legislation provides two years in which to obtain and place a bust of Marshall in the spot where Taney’s bust is now.
The legislation was sponsored by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md.
“We’ve been working on this for a long time, but the finish was pretty quick, and that was by design,” Cardin said.
Maryland removed a statue of Justice Taney from the front of the statehouse in 2017 after Gov. Larry Hogan urged that it be taken down.
“Thurgood Marshall was an inspiration who helped tear down the walls of segregation in America. It is wholly appropriate that such a civil rights and legal icon displace Roger Taney in the U.S. Capitol,” Cardin said in a statement. “Both hailed from Maryland, but Marshall was a beacon of hope for racial equality. His uplifting voice of equality and opportunity is exactly what our nation needs at this moment.”
