Who Voted Agains the White Supremist Bill
U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Black Democrat, was the solitary Mississippi member to vote in favor of removing monuments devoted to white supremacists from the halls of the nation's Capitol today. A 285-120 majority passed the bill , House Resolution 3005, this evening with all 120 nay votes coming from Republican members, including two from Mississippi.
"Statues of those who served in the Confederacy or supported slavery or segregation should not take a place of honor in the U.Southward. Capitol—that's why I voted to #RemoveHate today," Rep. Thompson, who represents Mississippi's bulk-Black second Congressional District, said in a tweet today.
Each land is allowed to cull statues of notable residents to represent it in the U.Southward. Capitol's Statuary Hall, merely Mississippi is the only country that chose 2 Confederates to represent information technology there: Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Colonel James Zachariah George , both avowed white supremacists and slave owners in Mississippi.
Later on slavery's terminate, J.Z. George led the effort to enshrine white supremacy into state law every bit one of the leading architects behind the Jim Crow provisions he and others inserted into the 1890 Mississippi Constitution, which rolled back civil-rights gains Black Mississippians had made since the Civil War. The new constitution ended democracy participation for Blackness Mississippians with the introductions of poll taxes, literacy tests and felony voter disenfranchisement—the latter of which remains in effect today.
"Information technology is the manifest intention of this Convention to secure to the State of Mississippi 'white supremacy,'" the official 1890 constitutional tape stated .
H.R. 3005 would require the removal of Davis' and George's statues along with any monuments to white supremacists other states selected too.
'Confederate Statues Have No Place On Capitol Hill'
Two white Mississippi Republicans, 1st Congressional District Rep. Trent Kelly and quaternary Congressional District Rep. Steven Palazzo, similar nearly in their political party, voted confronting removing the monuments today. Only 67 of the U.Southward. House'due south 213 Republican members voted for H.R. 3005.
Mississippi'south tertiary Congressional Commune representative, Republican Michael Guest, joined 24 other GOP members and two Democrats who did non cast a vote on the bill.
"Our Capitol Edifice should represent those who fought for a more inclusive America. Confederate statues have no place on Capitol Colina," Rep. Thompson, who serves Mississippi's 2nd Congressional District, said in a tweet before today.
If it becomes police, H.R. 3005 would crave the identification and removal of any statue or bust in the Capitol depicting an "individual who served voluntarily at any time as a member of the Armed Forces of the Confederates States of America" or "who served as an official of the Government of the Confederate States of America."
The bill specifically requires the removal of a bust of former U.Due south. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland, who issued the 1857 Dred Scott 5. Sandford decision that declared Black people were not citizens of the United States and that Congress could non ban slavery in the states.
If H.R. 3005 becomes law, Taney's bosom at the entrance of the Old Supreme Court chamber in the U.S. Capitol would exist replaced with a bust of Thurgood Marshall, the commencement Blackness member of the nation's high courtroom.
"While the removal of Primary Justice Roger Brooke Taney's bust from the United States Capitol does not relieve the Congress of the historical wrongs it committed to protect the institution of slavery, it expresses Congress's recogntion of 1 of the well-nigh notorious wrongs to accept e'er taken identify in one of its rooms, that of Principal Justice Roger Brooke Taney's Dred Scott v. Sandford decision," the text of the bill says.
Hyde-Smith: 'Not The Role of Congress to Dictate To States'
The U.Due south. Senate must approve the legislation before information technology can become law. The U.S. Senate is split l-50 between the two major parties, though Democrats command the chambers thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote. Yet, Republicans tin use the filibuster to cake bills that earn support from fewer than 60 members.
One of Mississippi's 2 Republican U.S. senators, Cindy Hyde-Smith, signaled last year that she would oppose legislation to remove white-supremacist monuments from the U.Due south. Capitol.
"At that place are articulate rules and procedures set for the designation, receipt, and placement of statues in the United States Capitol," Hyde-Smith told Ringlet Call last yr. "Any state, including Mississippi, can avail itself to that process if it wants to commutation statues. How to all-time depict the history of our nation is always upwardly for debate, merely it is not the role of Congress to dictate to states which statues should exist placed in the Capitol."
Before Hyde-Smith became a Republican, she served as a Democratic senator in the Mississippi Legislature where, in 2001, she introduced a bill that would take named a department of highway the "Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway." During her 2018 campaign, photos of Hyde-Smith dressed in a Confederate compatible at the Jefferson Davis home in Biloxi added to the national outcry over a remark she made virtually a "public hanging." This reporter broke the story that year that Hyde-Smith attended a white-only segregation university which sprang up afterward the U.Southward. Supreme Courtroom forced Mississippi to integrate its public schools in a late 1969 ruling.
McCarthy: 'Democrats Can't Hide Their Shameful History'
The Autonomous-controlled U.Southward. Firm passed a bill to remove the white-supremacist monuments last year, but it died after the U.South. Senate, then controlled by Republicans, declined to consider information technology.
Though his party voted against removing the white-supremacy monuments by a about ii-to-i vote, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy voted for it while criticizing Democrats for holding the vote in a statement today proverb, "Democrats can't hide their shameful history."
"The bill we're voting on today we've voted on before. I supported information technology (then), and I support it now," said McCarthy, who is from North Carolina. "But permit me state a simple fact: All of the statues existence removed past this bill are statues of Democrats."
The Republican minority leader said Democrats were "drastic to pretend their party has progressed from the days of supporting slavery, pushing Jim Crow laws and supporting the KKK."
McCarthy was referring to the fact that the southern Democratic Party historically supported slavery and segregation. Racist Democrats, known as Dixiecrats, once dominated southern states, including Mississippi. Dixiecrat legislatures in southern states chose the Confederate monuments that now reside in bronze hall.
The parties began a mass realignment afterward President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, signed the Civil Rights Deed in 1964. In that year's presidential ballot, Democratic southern states overwhelmingly voted for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Ceremonious Rights Act. In Mississippi, 87% of the white-just electorate voted for Goldwater, making information technology the get-go time the Magnolia Country had voted for a Republican since Ulysses S. Grant in 1872.
After the Ceremonious Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Mississippi continually shifted toward the GOP, where white Republicans now dominate the Legislature, all eight top elected statewide offices and all except Thompson's seat in the land's congressional delegation.
In McCarthy's argument today, he claimed that Democrats had "doubled downward" on their history by "replacing the racism of the by" with "critical race theory." What McCarthy described was not actual critical race theory, however. Instead, he referred to anti-racist ideas, specifically mentioning Ibram X. Kendi's volume, " How To Be Anti-Racist ," which proposes solutions for combatting systemic racism. He also incorrectly labeled Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 Project, which examines the historical role of slavery in America'southward founding, as "critical race theory."
"America is not a racist country," the Republican minority leader added, echoing a sentiment that Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves shared in April during Mississippi'south "Confederate Heritage Month" that he declared .
McCarthy said he applauded "the Democrats for removing Democrat (sic) statues" from the Capitol.
'Homage to Detest, Non Heritage'
Democratic U.Due south. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explained her support for the legislation in a spoken communication today.
"As I have said earlier, the halls of Congress are the very middle of our commonwealth. The statues that nosotros display should embody our highest ethics as Americans, expressing who we are and who nosotros aspire to be equally a nation," Pelosi said. "Monuments to men or people who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plain racist end are a grotesque affront to those ethics. They're homage to hate, not heritage. They must exist removed."
Business firm Bulk Leader Steny Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who sponsored H.R. 3005, said in a oral communication on the House Flooring today that the events of the past year have fabricated it fifty-fifty more important to remove those symbols from the Capitol.
"Madam Speaker, when I brought this nib to the Floor simply nearly a year agone, I referred to our Capitol building as a 'sacred space' for democracy. The intervening months accept shown us in ways nosotros could not take imagined and then, just how true that statement is," Hoyer said. "We watched our temple of democracy defiled by a tearing insurrection. For many of us here, that was a watershed moment, seeing such evils pervade the halls of the American Capitol. However, for African Americans who have been serving here, working here, and visiting here for many decades, that sense of defilement of this 'sacred space' is all too familiar.
"Considering when they see individuals similar John Calhoun, Charles Aycock, and James Paul Clarke historic in stone and bronze in these halls, they are reminded that, for then much of our history, the leaders and leading institutions of our regime and our land did not view them equally equal or, at times, even homo," Hoyer continued. "When they enter the solemn old Supreme Court Chamber and stare into the cold marble eyes of Roger Brooke Taney, they are reminded that, at i fourth dimension, the highest court in our land declared that Black lives did not matter."
'A Smashing Day To Advocate For Country Sovereignty'
Earlier today, McCarthy unveiled a list of appointees to a taskforce to develop Republican policies that includes several members who voted against removing the white-supremacist monuments, including Rep. Palazzo. Palazzo is also currently nether a U.S. Firm ethics investigation.
Mississippi'due south Republican members accept not offered explanations for their votes today. Merely Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama, tweeted his views today.
"I back up federalism and a land'south right to determine for itself who information technology should honor. Every bit such, I will proudly vote 'No' on H.R. 3005," Brooks wrote.
Southern Dixiecrats historically used the language of "state's rights" and "state sovereignty" to defend what they characterized as their state's sovereign right to enslave people, demand the render of escaped enslaved people from other statesand, later, racial segregation protected in Mississippi by the Jim Crow laws that James Z. George wrote and embedded into the 1890 Mississippi constitution.
Those old Dixiecrat euphemisms for maintaining white supremacy take enjoyed a contempo resurgence in use among some southern Republicans, though. Last week, Rep. Palazzo invoked it to explain his opposition to President Joe Biden's clearing policies.
"It's a great 24-hour interval to abet for state sovereignty. I joined my GOP colleagues to remind the American people that our Constitution recognizes states' right to defend themselves against invasion," said Palazzo, whose state is nearly 900 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border .
Davis: A 'Hero' for Roger Wicker
WJTV reported last year that, like Hyde-Smith, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker opposes legislation to remove white supremacist monuments from the U.S. Capitol and supports leaving decisions about who to honor in Statuary Hall upwards to states.
"It would be a fault for Congress to remove statues placed in the U.South. Capitol by Mississippi or whatsoever land," WJTV reported Wicker saying in June 2020. "In my view, such an overreach would exist counterproductive to the healthy conversations on race happening across the land. Under federal law, state governments are solely responsible for selecting and replacing the statues that correspond their states."
In Jackson in Dec 2017, Wicker offered remarks at the opening ceremony of Two Museums, including the Mississippi Ceremonious Rights Museum. During his speech, Wicker included Jefferson Davis among a list of "heroes," saying it was because he, equally a U.Southward. senator in the years earlier becoming president of the Confederacy, had helped direct a renovation and enlargement of the U.S. Capitol.
Davis later, of course, presided over the southern coup against the United States to demand the continuation and expansion of slavery. Later on the Confederates lost the war, the United States indicted Davis for treason just never brought him to trial. Mississippi's segregationist leaders gave the statues of Davis and George to the U.Southward. Capitol in 1931.
Donna Ladd contributed to this story.
Source: https://www.mississippifreepress.org/13398/two-mississippi-reps-vote-to-keep-white-supremacist-statues-in-u-s-capitol/
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