Yes Taney was chief justice for the awful Dred Scott decision, but he did free the slaves he inherited from his father, and never joined the Confederacy.

I have no problem removing statues of traitors, but what is the end point?

IIRC this movement to remove monuments began with the Dylan Roof shooting.

If it is for owning slaves, then are you willing to tear down the Jefferson Memorial? Washington Monument?



A clear line can be drawn between those that betrayed the Union, and those that didn't

I haven't kept up with the dates & rates of removal but it seems there are a lot more statues being removed in the last couple years and obviously more due to be removed in the near future.

If people are tearing down statues for different reasons but I believe in a lot of those cases it was because of what the Confederacy stood for because of the shooting in the state where the Confederate flag flew at the state capitol. I know he wasn't a member of the Confederacy but I think people are supporting the removal because of the racist attitudes that have existed for so long. See all the White nationalists who showed up to protest the removal and I doubt their reasons had anything to do with the fact they betrayed the Union since many of them were calling the left "Anti-American".

As far as the Trump-like question if people want to I'm not going to stop them though the Washington Monument would be pretty difficult to do so.

Those are the ones to celebrate, NOT the neanderthals who didn't consider my ancestors worthy of citizenship, let alone believe they were human beings.

Read that jackasses opinion, which in part noted the following -

I am all for tearing down all Confederate Statues. For removing the battle flag.

I am surprised that someone posting on DU would use that.

It completely deflects from the point. Slave-owner George Washington was a President as was slave-owner Thomas Jefferson. There is a memorial here in Philly that HONORS George Washington's slaves on the site of the original President's mansion, and discusses this history IN CONTEXT -







It took years of protest to get the CORRECT history of the era memorialized and available for view and discussion. In essence, to resurrect the existence of 9 human beings who served that family and who were dragged back and forth to Virginia every 6 months because Pennsylvania forbid slavery.

The problem here in the U.S. is that due to continued white hegemony, the true history is rarely taught and when people agitate for such, as was done during the '90s, clever and nefarious terms are coined like "political correctness" or talking points like what you just spouted are manufactured in order to deflect from teaching the real U.S. history, in all its glory and ugliness.

The "Washington Monument" was not around when George Washington was alive. It can be renamed if one wishes and ironically it basically copies the types of monuments that were ubiquitous in a particular African country thousands of years ago (that I have been to).

Thanks for your post. Learned something new.

If you advocate removing Taney, then again, what is the line to where you DON'T remove a statue?


Agree that ALL history must be taught. Even the messy slavery, Jim Crow, Native American Genocide, etc. People need to be taught our history is not pretty in many areas, and our "White-Christian" nation was built on the backs of those that were neither white or Christian at the time.


So you did not answer my question - where do you draw the line as to what gets removed/renamed, and what doesn't?

No one is saying to "remove history". We are saying to CORRECT the bullshit history that has been taught for the past century.

The New York Times has an article about this -

Again, do we where is the line between Taney and Washington?

Your article doesn't address that - only between Confederates and non-Confederates.

Everything you bolded doesn't apply to Taney any more than it does to Washington or Jefferson.


So no, I didn't make the same argument as Trump did.

Post #13 adds to that - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141846126#post13

Here is how Washington was dealt with here in Philadelphia - with respect to the site of the original "White House" (President's House) while the D.C. mansion was being built -



The names of the 9 slaves who served the Washingtons is engraved at this memorial and their history is discussed along with the history of the house. This site is across the street from Independence Hall and next to the building where the Liberty Bell is displayed. A portion of the slave passages in the basement of the mansion have been preserved and are viewable under plexiglass in one section of the monument.

I.e., you take those "monuments" (including statues) and you ADD the historical context to them - whether via video presentations (as was done for the President's House) or other multimedia.

Many of the Confederate statues being moved or removed have been on the property of state capitol buildings. Those statues belong somewhere else.

We have a similar issue going on right here in Philly regarding the statue of former Mayor Frank Rizzo, a racist thug, who was originally a Democrat and eventually switched parties. There are calls to move the statue of him somewhere else away from the current city Municipal Building (which is a city-owned office property that houses the overflow of city staff not in our City Hall) - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141845431



IMHO, this statue needs to be moved down to South Philly where he grew up. He was a fucking disgrace to this city as Police Commissioner and as Mayor and should not be glorified by having a place of prominence on government property.

In a realistic since, these small statues can be moved. The large monuments (or historic properties) cannot, and the latter is where context needs to be added to fill out the history.

And very important to do so for Mount Vernon, Monticello, etc - historical sites.


So are you proposing that every Washington Statue, monument nationwide have additions to them?

Why keep perpetuating the false history? They took time to put the lies and exaggerations and distortions out there. It's high time to fix them.

Will it take some time? Of course it will. But that stuff was put out there over a century or more and if it takes that long to correct it, then so be it.

Meaning was that intentional?

to his adoring fans.

A little history on it and him - https://billypenn.com/2016/08/13/how-the-rizzo-statue-came-to-be-and-why-moving-it-wont-be-easy/

immortalizing the chief justice that kept slavery alive and in the end caused a civil war which finally ended this abomination called slavery. Why do you suppose the statue is there in the first place? Put it in a museum.

I am a Maryland resident... all my life, and I am a Kennedy Liberal, wanting all people to be safe, healthy, educated, prosperous. I also was a history major. I am so torn with the destruction of these monuments. Yes they are a part of our history that is not too be proud of, but where will it end. Do we remove all monuments that may have been related or part of slavery? If we do, then do we need to meet in DC to tear down the Jefferson Memorial, then will we need to travel down the road to Mount Vernon. We will need to remove every Washington Monument from every city of this country. We are attempting to do what the Nazis, Russians, and the other horrendous regimes did or tried to do, remove history from their countries. We are also a country that allows this. Remember when we went into Iraq, and the citizens took down the statues of Hussein?, well we didn't stop that, but what really was tearing me apart was when we didnt stop the run of museum raids. to see them art being taken without thought and reason....sad... Please before we applaud the destruction /taking down of monuments, lets think about our whole country.

You take these "monuments" and you put them in context with what ELSE was going on with this nation's history and who was impacted by those being glorified. This requires doing actual research, in a country that has been dumbed down and numbed.

A number of these Confederate monuments were put there by the Daughters of the Confederacy, in most cases some 90 - 100 years ago, and they put them all over the country where any celebrated southern leader had set foot. It's time to move on.

Everyone was expected to "give up their heritage" to participate in the great American experiment that basically melded many "heritages" into what is basically a "fusion" of cultures. You have to look again at those eras when the U.S. did not embrace the purported words of the Declaration or preamble of the Constitution, and discuss it without white-washing it.

One of the Frontline documentaries on the Iraq war went into this but I forget which one it was exactly.

It isn't removing history though and I doubt a lot of these monuments are presented in their full historical context.

This judge was involved in the Dred Scott decision.