Nancy Pelosi orders removal of portraits of Confederate speakers

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had portraits of former speakers who served in the Confederacy ­removed from the Capitol.

Maintenance workers remove the portrait of Howell Cobb from the Speakers Lobby of the US Capitol on Friday. Picture: AFP

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had portraits of former speakers who served in the Confederacy ­removed from the Capitol.

“The halls of congress are the very heart of our democracy,” Ms Pelosi, the Democrat leader, said in a letter to the clerk of the House of Representatives.

“There is no room in the hallowed halls of congress or in any place of honour for memorialising men who embody the violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy.”

In many states, Confederate monuments and symbols are quickly being removed amid protests sparked by the May 25 killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. Some activists have called for the removal of all statues of people who owned slaves. Ms Pelosi has said artwork commemorating people who served in the Confederacy should be removed, saying these people betrayed the country.

The four speakers who served in the Confederacy are Robert Hunter of Virginia, who was speaker from 1839 to 1841, Howell Cobb of Georgia (1849 to 1851), James Orr of South Carolina (1857 to 1859), and Charles Crisp of Georgia, who was speaker after the Civil War, from 1891 to 1895.

Portraits are hung in the Speakers Lobby and around the chamber, a place generally closed to the public. In 2015, then-speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, had a portrait of Dennis Hastert removed, just days after the former speaker pleaded guilty to breaking banking laws, in what became known as hush money to cover up sexual misconduct allegations.

The collection of art of all speakers officially started in 1910, but several had commissioned and hung portraits before then.

“The Speaker has the power to do that,” house minority leader Kevin McCarthy said when asked about the removal of the portraits.

Ms Pelosi has also called for a dozen statues to be removed from the Capitol, which is more difficult because the statues are placed by states. In the Senate on Friday, Democrat Cory Booker sought to pass by unanimous consent a bill that would remove statues of people who served in the Confederacy from the US Capitol, saying the memorials are an assault to the ideals of the nation. “We cannot separate the Confederate status from this history and legacy and white supremacy in this country,” Senator Booker said. “The entire history of our country hails as ­heroes people who took up arms against their own nation.”

The bill was blocked by Republican Roy Blunt, chairman of the Senate rules committee, who said he wanted to further review the legislation, and that some states were already working to replace their statues.

The Wall Street Journal