Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday ordered the removal of four portraits of former House speakers who also served as Confederate leaders, a symbolic step to rid the U.S. Capitol of pro-slavery relics amid a nationwide reckoning over race.
Pelosi will join the House clerk to take down the paintings Thursday afternoon, a day before the holiday “Juneteenth,” which marks the day that the last enslaved African Americans in the Confederacy learned of their freedom.
“There’s no room in the hallowed halls in this democracy, this temple of democracy, to memorialize people who embody violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. “We must lead by example.”
Pelosi’s move comes after she again sought to remove nearly a dozen Confederate statues in the Capitol, which have long been criticized by Democrats as glorifying pro-slavery politicians. But under current law, each state decides which statues to send, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week he would also defer to the states.
Later on Thursday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) tried to force action on legislation to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol. But Senate Rules Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said he had just received the bill and that he wanted time to review it.
Blunt also suggested his committee might hold a hearing on the issue and said Democrats could lean on state leaders to change their statues. And he dinged Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for not taking action when Schumer was Rules Committee chairman several years ago.
Booker then urged Blunt to hold a hearing, and Blunt said he hoped to continue talking to Booker about it.
“I will make the personal appeal to you individually on these matters. I hope we can do that,” Booker said.
Democrats made a similar push to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol in 2017, after the nation was roiled by a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that left one woman dead.
But Pelosi does have the power to clear away the portraits, which are part of the speaker’s portrait collection lining the walls outside the House chamber. All four men — Robert Hunter of Virginia, Howell Cobb of Georgia, James Orr of South Carolina and Charles Crisp of Georgia — served as speakers of the House.
Pelosi noted she didn’t know about the men’s paintings hanging in the Capitol until the building’s curator informed them, part of a general inventory of the statues.
The push to remove pro-Confederacy memorabilia from the Capitol takes place as cities and towns nationwide have toppled their own Civil War-era statues and have sought to confront decades of systemic racism against black Americans. Much of the national scorn has focused on statues of men like Jefferson Davis — whose statue still stands in Statuary Hall outside the House chamber.
Burgess Everett contributed to this report.