House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ordered four portraits of former speakers who served in the Confederacy to be removed from the U.S. Capitol.
Pelosi called for the “immediate removal of the portraits” of Robert Hunter of Virginia (1839-1841), Howell Cobb of Georgia (1849-1851), James Orr of South Carolina (1857-1859), and Charles Crisp of Georgia (1891-1895).
The four were all members of Pelosi's Democratic Party.
“The portraits of these men are symbols that set back our nation’s work to confront and combat bigotry,” Pelosi said.
“We didn’t know about this until we were taking inventory of the statues and the curator told us that there were four paintings of speakers in the Capitol of the United States, four speakers who served in the Confederacy. So tomorrow, Juneteenth, the clerk will oversee removal of those Confederate speakers,” Pelosi said on Thursday.
Pelosi added that there is “no room in hallowed halls of democracy, this temple of democracy, to memorialize people who embody violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy.”
Meanwhile, analysts say Pelosi has failed to lead by example by condemning the actions of her late father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., who as mayor of Baltimore in 1948 oversaw the dedication of a Confederate statue — the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument — in the city's Wyman Park.
As Breitbart News detailed:
At the time, the speaker’s father said people could look to Jackson’s and Lee’s lives as inspiration and urged Americans to “emulate Jackson’s example and stand like a stone wall against aggression in any form that would seek to destroy the liberty of the world.”Pelosi has also requested the removal of Confederate statues at the Capitol, describing them as “monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end.”
“World Wars I and II found the North and South fighting for a common cause, and the generalship and military science displayed by these two great men in the War between the States lived on and were applied in the military plans of our nation in Europe and the Pacific areas,” D’Alesandro said at the dedication ceremony, as detailed by the Baltimore Sun.
He continued: “Today with our nation beset by subversive groups and propaganda which seeks to destroy our national unity, we can look for inspiration to the lives of Lee and Jackson to remind us to be resolute and determined in preserving our sacred institutions … remain steadfast in our determination to preserve freedom, not only for ourselves, but for other liberty-loving nations who are striving to preserve their national unity as free nations.”
“While I believe it is imperative that we never forget our history lest we repeat it, I also believe that there is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or places of honor across the country,” the speaker said in a letter to the Joint Committee on the Library.
Free Press International
