Congress has passed a bill ordering the removal of a statue of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, the justice who crafted the Dred Scott decision that ruled Black people were not eligible for citizenship in the United States, whether they were slave or free, NBC News reports. The statue will be replaced with a bust of the first Black justice on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall.
“While the removal of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s bust from the Capitol does not relieve the Congress of the historical wrongs it committed to protect the institution of slavery, it expresses Congress’s recognition of one of the most notorious wrongs to have ever taken place in one of its 19 rooms,” the bill reads.