Four portraits of House speakers who were part of the Confederate government will be removed from Congress on Friday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
Pelosi said she has ordered House Clerk Cheryl L. Johnson to remove the portraits of former Speakers Robert Hunter of Virginia (1839-41), Howell Cobb of Georgia (1849-51), James Orr of South Carolina (1857-59), and Charles Crisp of Georgia (1891-95). All four men were part of the Confederacy in one form or another.
The likenesses of almost every House speaker line the second-floor hallways and stairwell in the House.
Pelosi said she only learned in recent days that four of the former speakers were members of the Confederacy. Pelosi said she found out about the portraits when she requested the removal of 11 statues of Confederate officers from the Capitol.
“As I have said before, there is no room in the hallowed halls of this temple of democracy to memorialize people who embody violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy,” Pelosi said.
The portraits will be removed Friday to commemorate “Juneteenth,” which marks the day in 1865 that Union officers read the Emancipation Proclamation declaring freedom for enslaved people in the United States.
Pelosi’s request to remove the statues has so far been blocked by Senate Republicans, who jointly control the Capitol statue display and say the states who put them there must decide whether to remove them.
