Replacement of Bust of Roger Brooke Taney with Bust of Thurgood Marshall
Floor Speech
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I thank the chairwoman for her great leadership on this.
Madam Speaker, it is one thing to remember the Nation's Confederate traitors. It is another thing to glorify them. It is time to stop glorifying white supremacy in black robes and Confederate traitors who defected from the Union and took up arms against the United States.
Now, I represent Frederick County, Maryland, where Justice Taney lived. The city of Frederick, 5 years ago, took down their statue of the man who wrote the Dred Scott opinion, which found that an African American could never be a citizen within the meaning of Article III of the Constitution, and in which he wrote: ``Blacks have no rights which the White man is bound to respect.''
In the name of original intent, Justice Taney transformed our Constitution into a White man's compact. He disgraced the Supreme Court. It would take the Civil War, the Reconstruction amendments, and the civil rights movement to dismantle the white supremacist constitution.
Now we are going to replace him with a great Marylander, who has stood the test of time, Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was one of the architects of the legal strategy to dismantle Jim Crow and to replace Plessy v. Ferguson.
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, Justice Marshall argued the White primary line of cases: Smith v. Allwright and Terry v. Adams. He argued Brown v. Board of Education. He became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice.
As for all the other Federal officeholders who took an oath to support our Constitution but then defected to the Confederacy and waged insurrection and rebellion against the United States, they were banned by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from ever serving in public office again, at the Federal level, at the State level, or at the local level.
Why should they occupy a position of honor and reverence in this building?
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