WASHINGTON _ U.S. House Democratic leaders want to remove a bust at the Capitol of Roger Brooke Taney, the Maryland-born former U.S. Supreme Court chief justice best known for writing the Dred Scott decision holding that black Americans were not citizens.
It would be replaced by one of Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall _ also a Marylander _ who became the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court in 1967.
The push by Maryland Democrats in Washington comes 2 { years after a statue of Taney was removed from the State House front lawn in Annapolis and the city of Baltimore took down another Taney monument. It was the latest monument linked to slavery, segregation or the Confederacy to be removed from a public square.
House Democrats were to appear Monday afternoon at news conference unveiling legislation that would be required to make the U.S. Capitol switch.
The effort is being led by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of southern Maryland, along with Baltimore-area lawmakers C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger and John Sarbanes, and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Montgomery County.
Others on board include Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass of California and House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. All are Democrats.
Last Friday was the 163rd anniversary of the Dred Scott decision. In it, Taney wrote that Scott, a longtime slave suing for his freedom, was not a citizen and that no slave _ nor their free descendants _ had standing to sue in the federal courts. He based his ruling on an interpretation of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
In 2003, Taney's former Frederick home closed as a historical society changed its contents to offer a new understanding of Taney and the period in which he lived. It reopened in 2004.
William Rehnquist, then the chief justice, attended the reopening and said Taney was a clear, forceful writer possessing a great legal mind. "We shouldn't be too quick to judge people of the past by standards of our own," said Rehnquist, who died in 2005.
