Fifth District Congresswoman Julia Letlow got it right on one issue and got it wrong on another.
Recently our Congresswoman voted “Yes” to make June 19th or Juneteenth a Federal Holiday. We think it was a correct vote because it symbolizes and celebrates a national acknowledgment that slavery was an evil and a disgrace.
The Juneteenth Holiday was overwhelmingly supported by Congress and signed into law by President Biden.
Whatever Brownie Points the Congresswoman gained among minorities for her support of Juneteenth, she lost this week when she voted against H.B. 3005 which asks states to remove statues of Confederate leaders from display in the Old Capitol.
H.B.3005 directs the removal of a bust of a Supreme Court justice who authored an opinion upholding slavery from display in the Capitol’s Old Supreme Court Chamber, in addition to the removal of statues depicting individuals who joined the Confederacy or otherwise defended slavery, segregation, and white supremacy from Statuary Hall. It would authorize appropriations as may be necessary to carry out this legislation.
The Dredd Scott decision was a completed partisan decision that upheld a slave owner’s right to go into free territory and retrieve a run-a-way slave.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, authored the majority opinion that upheld slavery in Dredd Scott v. Sandford (1857). Despite this scar on our national character, Justice Taney’s statue is listed among the nation’s heroes in the Old Supreme Court Chamber. H.B. 3005 wants his statue removed and replaced with a bust of Justice Thurgood Marshall — the Court’s first Black justice.
Justice Marshall also was the lead attorney in the Brown desegregation decision that ended segregation in public schools.
H.B. 3005 goes further than that. It requires states to reclaim and replace any statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection on individuals who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.
It will also require the removal of statues depicting John C. Calhoun, Charles B. Aycock, and John C. Clarke because of their role in defending slavery, segregation, and white supremacy.
Congresswoman Letlow’s opposition to H.B. 3005 is confusing, especially in light of her support the Juneteenth holiday.
In one instance she seems to be a breath of enlightened fresh air, but in the next she seems to wrap herself in the stars and bars while whistling “Dixie.”
Anyone who took up arms against the United States for any reason is a traitor, according to the Constitution.
They have no place among the heroes of our nation.
The Justices who made the political decision to perpetuate the enslavement of human beings for profit are not heroes either.
True, they ruled in the Dredd Scott case as they interpreted the law, but history has proven that interpretation morally wrong.
Justice Taney was not a hero.
Sadly, Congresswoman Letlow joins him in infamy on this issue.
