The United States Capitol building currently houses 16+ statues of several members of the Confederate States Army & Gov't along with several White Supremacists. There are four times more statues of these immoral individuals than there are statues of people of color. These confederate and white supremacist honorees not only agreed with the institution of slavery but also physically and politically fought, unvirtuously & ineffectively, to uphold ideals that are contrary to our constitution. At an even wider glance, of the 100 statues in the U.S. capitol, only 4 honor people of color. Furthermore, these statues were not dedicated at the end of the Civil War, but rather decades later to make Black and Brown people feel unwelcome in our own country. Many of the dedications occurred in the 1920s and 1960s, two periods in US history that witnessed an intense rise in white supremacy: Jim Crow and the New Right. 

As stated in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL MEN are created EQUAL, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

How can we as a nation truly live by these ideals when we honor individuals who put their lives on the line to ensure that these unalienable rights never apply to people of color? How can we truly say that we are “one nation under God, indivisible,” when we glorify those who attempted to split our country in half in an effort to further enforce the racist idealogy that the white race is superior to all others? 

There is one simple answer: WE CAN’T.

We The People Of The United States have a list of DEMANDS that will make OUR country a more safe and more equitable environment for ALL citizens of ALL backgrounds. 

1. We DEMAND the United States Congress immediately remove the statues of Jefferson Davis, Joseph Wheeler, Uriah M. Rose, Edmund Kirby Smith, Alexander H. Stephens, John C. Breckinridge, Edward D. White, James Z. George, Zebulon B. Vance, Wade Hampton III, John Kenna, Charles B. Aycock, John Calhoun, James Paul Clarke, Roger B. Taney, and John Tyler as all have direct ties to the confederacy and/or white supremacy.

2. We DEMAND the United States Congress replace the statues of the aforementioned individuals with statues of People of Color, in consideration that of the 100 statues in the Capitol Building, only 4 currently honor Black Americans.