The House voted this week to reject an amendment to restore a racist Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery. The statue depicted a Black “mammy” holding a Confederate soldier’s baby and a Black enslaved person following a Confederate soldier into battle. In a 230 to 192 vote, only 24 Republicans joined Democrats in opposition to the monument.
The Reconciliation Memorial, also called the “New South” monument, was erected in 1914 by famed white supremacist President Woodrow Wilson. An independent commission recommended the statue for removal in 2022. In December 2023, the Army, which operates Arlington National Cemetery, informed Congress that it intended to remove the statue.
The amendment was brought by Georgia gun shop owner-turned-congressman Andrew Clyde. This was not Clyde’s first time exhibiting racist tendencies over memorials. In 2022, Clyde led House Republicans in blocking a “routine measure” to name a federal courthouse in Florida after its first Black state supreme court justice, Joseph W. Hatchett.
The House vote showed an increase in GOP support for white supremacist symbology vis-a-vis 2021 when only 120 Republicans voted against removing Confederate statues from the Capitol.
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