Showing posts with label confederate statues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label confederate statues. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Florida to replace Confederate statue in US Capitol with statue of black woman

Florida could soon help diversify the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall, by replacing a Confederate general's likeness with the hall's first statue honoring an African-American woman.

The state Senate voted unanimously Wednesday to install a statue of educator Mary McLeod Bethune in the spot where a statue of Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith still stands.

"It's a way of recognizing our history, but also our diversity. It shows Florida in our best light," said the bill's sponsor, Democratic Sen. Perry Thurston. "It's a major message. It shows not only Florida, but the nation that we are coming together and trying to recognize all of our history."

Bethune founded Daytona Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in 1904, which eventually became Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach.

Two years ago the state Legislature voted to remove Smith's statue from the U.S. Capitol over the objection of some members who said that was an effort to erase Southern history.

Smith is famously remembered as the last Confederate officer to surrender a significant force at the end of the Civil War, nearly two months after Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia and formally ended the war on April 9, 1865.

The law requiring the removal of the Smith statue set up a process to replace it.

An independent committee reviewed 130 recommendations from Floridians and presented the Legislature with three choices: Bethune; Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who wrote "The Everglades: River of Grass" and is credited with helping create that national park preserving 1.5 million acres (607,000 hectares) of wetlands in southern Florida; and George Washington Jenkins, who started the Publix supermarket chain.

Bethune was the committee's only unanimous choice.

[SOURCE: ABC NEWS]

Friday, August 18, 2017

Senator Cory Booker wants Confederate statues removed from Capitol Hill

Sen. Cory Booker plans to introduce a bill to remove statues from the US Capitol honoring Confederate soldiers despite President Donald Trump calling these memorials "beautiful."

"I will be introducing a bill to remove Confederate statues from the US Capitol building. This is just one step. We have much work to do," the New Jersey Democrat tweeted Wednesday.

There are at least 10 Confederate statues in the Capitol, distributed between the Hall of Columns, the Capitol Visitor Center and other locations, most notably Statuary Hall, where each state chooses two statues to be on display.

Booker said in a statement to CNN that having to see Confederate statues in a position of honor in a place as public as the Capitol can be "painful."

"The Capitol is a place for all Americans to come and feel welcomed, encouraged, and inspired," he said. "Confederate statues do the opposite."

"They are, unequivocally, not only statues of treasonous Americans, but are symbolic to some who seek to revise history and advance hate and division," the lawmaker added. "To millions of Americans, they are painful, injurious symbols of bigotry and hate, celebrating individuals who sought to break our nation asunder and preserve the vile institution of slavery and white supremacy."

Read more: There are Confederate statues on Capitol Hill. Cory Booker has a bill that removes them.

Roger B. Taney statue removed from Maryland State House ground

A statue of the of the U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African-Americans has been removed from the grounds of the Maryland State House.

The statue of Roger B. Taney was lifted away by a crane at about 2 a.m. Friday. It was lowered into a truck and driven away.

A panel voted by email Wednesday to remove the statue, which was erected in 1872.

House Speaker Michael Busch, who voted for removal, wrote this week that the statue “doesn’t belong” on the grounds. His comments came after the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. Gov. Larry Hogan said this week that removing the statue was “the right thing to do.”

Roger B. Taney statue removed from Maryland State House ground